Rose by a Lemon Tree
by geophf
Summary: I have a task to do. It is as simple as that. Bella Swan must die, and I will be the one to kill her. — Rosalie Lillian Hale. Companion piece to "My Sister Rosalie"
1. Apologia: DO NOT READ THIS STORY

**Apologia**

**Summary: **Companion piece to my story "My Sister Rosalie". Lemonerific. Spoilerific. Violenterific. Other summaries urge you to read their stories, this one urges the opposite: DO NOT READ THIS STORY! You have been warned.

I really had no desire to write this story. Really. But, as I'm sure some of my colleagues know all too well, some stories simply refuse to remain unwritten.

In my story "My Sister Rosalie", a story told entirely from Bella Swan's perspective, her dream of the honeysuckle and rose garden begs the question: what was happening in the world outside her dream? What was Rosalie experiencing as Bella floated in the ocean of her dream? The only way the reader would know the answer to those questions would be if Bella would know, and Bella, although very inquisitive, has not had much success in prying information from her captor. Prying _this_ story from Rosalie would be an impossibility. Certainly Rosalie does share things with Bella, but if she were to share something from this experience, it would only be a word or two, not the complete story presented here.

That's a shame for me and for some of my readers on my story "My Sister Rosalie". So, I am providing this story as a community service for me and for them. I am providing it as a service, but I really must say the following.

**Please don't read this story** for two reasons.

First and foremost, this is the _Midnight Sun_-equivalent, the companion story, to my story "My Sister Rosalie", specifically, this story revolves around the thoughts and feelings _Rosalie_ experiences on Bella's dream-filled night in February, 1934. This means starting from the end of the chapter entitled: "Compulsion" (circa chapter 22) and ending just past the end of the chapter entitled: "Rain by a Rose Garden" (circa chapter 24).

Please meditate carefully on this conundrum, dear reader. Rosalie's thoughts are opaque to Bella for the entire first book of "My Sister Rosalie", and Rosalie does not begin to open up to her captive until after the second book picks up steam.

In short, this story is a very big spoiler for "My Sister Rosalie". Put another way, you didn't read the _Midnight Sun_ fragment until after you had read _Twilight_ (several times) first, right?

Don't read this story.

Second, Book I of "My Sister Rosalie" is, to use the colloquialism, lemon-free. There are no _explicit_ descriptions in that book of things of a sexual nature.

This story, my dear reader, is nearly the opposite. This contains Rosalie's unmasked thoughts, and so things that happen to her in those chapters mentioned above from "My Sister Rosalie" are graphically depicted. Also, she reflects, quite frankly, on her current situation vis-à-vis Bella, including, but not limited to, contemplating murder in the first degree, as well as other feelings equally as explicit, possibly intimate, and definitely Not Safe For Work (NSFW). She also reflects on her experiences throughout her human life ... those human experiences that she is able to recall now as a vampire, that is. There are actually only a few human memories she has kept. Most of them are painful. As we know from _Eclipse, _she recalls quite clearly her rape and torture at the hands of her fiancé, Royce King II. She thinks about these things in _Eclipse,_ and she also thinks about them here in this story, as well.

In short, this story is graphic in its depiction of things of violence, things of a sexual nature, and things of containing elements of both.

Don't read this story.

Still reading this story? _Sigh!_ If I could have given this a story a more exclusive rating that "M", then I would have. Since I have not found a way to do this, I have this _caveat._

You have been warned.

* * *

**Chapter Synopses:**

1. **A/N **— "Apologia et Synopses": Author's note. Companion piece to my story "My Sister Rosalie". Lemonerific. Spoilerific. Violenterific. Other summaries urge you to read their stories, this one urges the opposite: DO NOT READ THIS STORY! You have been warned.

2. **Chapter 1** — "The Task: Rosalie": I have a task to do. It is as simple as that.

3. **Chapter 2** — "Memories and Sight: Edward": Edward. I was made for him, and he suits me. Beautiful, smart, a gentleman: courtly. Then he had to fall for this plain little excuse of a girl. Did I mention she's human? Edward is such a stupid brat, isn't he? Too bad he's going to kill me.

4. **Chapter 3** — "Transformation: Esme": One of the many things vampires shouldn't do is to play "house". All vampires are islands, and it's best that they stay that way. Of course, Esme doesn't really count as a vampire, though. Esme, the 'mommy' vampire! Does she even drink blood?

5. **Chapter 4** — "Intermezzo: Medicine: Father": Bella would drink more than a little taste of what she thinks is the distillation of Rosalie's voice to ease her coughing fit. But what was it, really? Rosalie recalls her own human experience and the bittersweet taste of the medicine on her tongue and in her heart.

**Chapter 5** — "Her Name: Mother"

6. **Chapter 5, part I **—"My Own Little Girl": Eternity. One would think one has plenty of time to think deep thoughts. One would think rightly. But when those thoughts are thought, what is to be done about them? What if nothing _can_ be done about them? Eternity renders time moot, but it doesn't grant patience. Just the opposite, in fact, for me.

7. **Chapter 5, part II **—"Birds and Bees": All children grow to become their parents. You think my father was harsh? It's not polite for the undead to speak ill of the living, so I'll only say that I wish, wish, wish I turned out like him, instead of ... Well, if wishes were horses ...

8. **Chapter 5, part III **—"Opposites": Vampires must be very, very careful in everything they do in this world, for, if not, we destroy what we touch. Even our very thoughts can destroy so, so easily. Even _my_ very thoughts. I _so_ liked that name, too. Ah, too bad!

9. **Chapter 5, P.S. **—"The Help": Anything, _anything,_ touches a Hale or what is a Hale's, and I'll make sure that it, and all its friends, _know_ how terrible a mistake that was. I will make them know, and never forget, and never, _ever,_ trespass on a Hale again. _Ever._

10. **Chapter 5, P.P.S. **—"Gwendolyn Hale": Mother. She was right, in her way, and I was wrong. But being right? It was nothing to gloat about. The surprising thing for me? Mother didn't gloat, but she didn't whine, either. Instead she did what she must. Mother _is_ a Hale.

**Chapter 6** — "The Soul: the Singer"

11. **Chapter 6, part I **—"Scents, Venom": I come home from hunting wolf — _ugh, wolf!_ — to find this? You'd figure with everything giving this area a wide berth because I had marked it as _my_ territory, this would be a safe haven for the girl. But how can I protect her from herself? ... How can I protect her from me?

12. **Chapter 6, part II **—"Family Time": Nothing like a group of vampires getting together to play family. Except when one of them doesn't march to that happy tune. And then comes a little cowgirl: _Oh, this is the one we really wanted!_ What to do? What to do?

13. **Chapter 6, part III **—"Escape": You really have to wonder at the impudence of the girl to come barging into what she knows is a vampires' house and then parade her detecting skills so brazenly. What did she think I would do? Pat her on the head?

14. **Chapter 6, part IV **—"Lust": You know, I'd rather not summarize my thoughts here. All the girl did was lay there, dying, and all I did while I tried to save her was to become a more wretched and despicable monster with each passing second. "No Summary" just sounds better.

15. **Chapter 6, part V **—"Bloodlust": How had Edward done it? The call of the girl's blood was so strong — so strong — that if I didn't find a way to fight it, she would be drained and dead this very moment. He resisted her song somehow. How had Edward done it?

16. **Chapter 6, part VI **—"Why?": As if I cared about what my venom can or can't do. I only care about one thing, okay? Me. Rosalie Lillian Hale. I don't need anything other than that. I don't need her, either. So leave me the Hell alone, okay? ... please?

17. **Chapter 7** — "The End: God": Well, at least I don't love the thing. That would make killing her really hard, now, wouldn't it? If I loved her, it would just destroy me to kill her, so I simply must not allow myself to love her. No matter what.

18. **Epilogue** — "Reveille: Rose": I have this "consolation." It can only get worse from here, and then she will die, because I will kill her with my own hands, hopefully, ... and then I will be destroyed. And this is the best-case scenario.


	2. The Task: Rosalie

**Chapter summary:** I have a task to do. It is as simple as that.

* * *

This creature has seen too much and has to die. The Cullens seemed somehow incapable to be able to reach that conclusion and to act on it. I took matters into my own hands. I simply had to. The Cullens would not, and if I did not, then others would act, and the consequences of that were all too easy to see, and all too terrible to contemplate.

Then, why, you may ask, am I lying in a bed in a log cabin in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere, holding this little weepy thing in my arms after having rocked it to sleep? You have every right to ask. The answer, also, is simple and unavoidable: this is all my fault.

My début, my Sweet Sixteen, was three years ago as you would measure it, or, as I would measure it, one eternity preceded by two years ago. If you had told me that I would be in this situation, I would have excused myself saying that I had other business to attend to. That business would be to have Mother have Father summon the hotel security. Obviously, you could not be on the invitation list, spouting such nonsense, and, if you were, we would cease keeping your company starting right now. I had no patience then as a human, and, in this existence, patience as a concept simply does not apply.

But, really, how could I possibly believe what you would be telling me? How could anyone? "Rosalie," you would tell me, "three years hence you will have abandoned your parents because you were raped by your fiancé. Then you will leave your new family, because of jealousy toward a plain girl of neither breeding nor bearing. You will kidnap her with every intention of murdering her. But then you will suffer many indignities for her sake: you will be away from civilization in rough-and-ready clothes, not having combed your hair nor fixed your appearance for days. You will save her life from the jaws of death more than several times, and comfort her in her sickness and sorrow, and you will lo..."

"Yes," I would reply very calmly on the outside, but horrified and exasperated that I had listened to this drivel for so long, "how amusing. If you will excuse me, I have an urgent matter to attend to." _Jealous of a plain girl! That will be the day!_ I would think contemptuously, dismissing you and dismissing your babbling from my thoughts as easily as I dismissed the servant handing me my first glass of champagne later that night. Besides, "comfort" is a weak word for the weak. _I _am a Hale; I am strong. I have need neither to give nor to receive comfort, thank you so very much.

But here I am, fallen from my throne atop the world, the belle of high society in Rochester, New York, to be lying here holding this girl in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, exactly in this impossible situation so described. One thing I have learnt about this eternity, it's first rule: _never say never. _The "impossible" is nearly always the "improbable", meaning there is at least a slim chance of it happening. In eternity, possibilities, even minute ones, are eventually exhausted. Impossible situations have been occurring for me with alarming regularity in my eternity. Like the situation I am in at present.

In fact, everything about this eternity, this non-life, is my fault. Everything has happened in direct correlation to my choices. I accept that now. But this is not my story — the story of Rosalie Lillian Hale — and of my eternal "reward", but about this little thing in my arms.

She's actually not that little. In fact, she's actually nothing of what she appears to be from first glance. First impressions of her? Dismiss her as a nothing, obviously. But that would be a mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake possible to make in this eternity.

Well, mistake or no, it is now my responsibility. Because I am the only one to accept it. I am the only one who can do this.

Bella Swan must die, and I will be the one to kill her.

I have a task to do. It is as simple as that.


	3. Memories and Sight: Edward

**Chapter summary:** _Edward._ I was made for him, and he suits me. Beautiful, smart, a gentleman: courtly. Then he had to fall for this plain little excuse of a girl. Did I mention she's human? Edward is such a stupid brat, isn't he? Too bad he's going to kill me.

* * *

I remember ...

_Of course I remember!_ Did you know that vampires don't really have memories, _per se?_ Memories imply having a past, and our past and present are ever before our eyes. We are cursed: trapped in this eternal, inescapable Now. Did you ever wonder why we "forget" our human memories? If we do not carry them forward, in our first days of creation, then the transfigured brain drops those pathways during the change, and this eternal Now does not contain them unless we recreate them as we are new "born". My memories from my humanity are few, and most of those are painful ones. Oh! How I wish I could forget some of my thoughts and actions in this "life"! But Eternity is relentless, as I, being eternal, am now relentless: my "past" is ever and mercilessly before me. Always.

It did, however, make earning my Ph.D. in mathematics and my M.D. this last year together a rather facile exercise. Edward's smugness at being so smart wore a little thin given that he couldn't help but be that way. I had proved that myself and then rubbed it in his face. I hung my lambskins in the hallway between his room and the music room, so he would be forced to see them as he passed them every day: _Roland Halley, M.D., Ph.D._ Yes, "Roland Halley". It was _possible_ for a woman to obtain a medical degree and a degree in mathematical philosophy, but, although possible, it would garner too much suspicion, and the name "Hale" was too recently in the news. It didn't stop me from having a very strong desire to pay both the medical review board and the theses chairs of both departments at the University of Rochester a very special visit as we left my home city. This was the 1930s, for goodness sake! Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger have already introduced Phenomenology abolishing the supposed limitations on our sex _more than thirty years ago!_

But getting a medical degree, and the additional training that Carlisle volunteered, proved to be very useful around here. Maybe I should have studied nutrition instead of mathematics ... but I hadn't foreseen this scenario. But, honestly, who could? I would've never had thought the Cullens to be as stupid as this!

_Ooh! Let's have our own pet human!_

Yes, _let's!_ That sounds just _peachy!_

As I was saying, I "remember" when my _dear brother Edward_ brought this little creature into my room to introduce me to her. I saw walking into the room a stick-figure of what I originally thought to be a boy with a long ponytail, if you can call that mincing, furtive dragging of her feet _"walking"_. I had mistaken its sex, but the unkept mousy brown hair, flat brown eyes, hunched shoulders and sallow skin didn't help her case. And unfitted jeans and a frumpy sweater pulled over a flannel shirt? Shoes? No, _cowboy boots! _

_So,_ I thought contemptuously, _this is my rival?_ She failed to measure up in every single way. I was actually impressed with my _dear brother_. He must have worked very hard to find a girl so completely my opposite.

And then she spoke ... if you could call it that! She couldn't even manage one syllable without Edward's prompting, and couldn't manage that, either: _Ummmm, yes?_ she gasped out. 'Erudite', I had called her. It was opposite day that day for everybody, you see.

If I stepped on her, I thought, she wouldn't crunch, she would squish. _Jellyfish_ had more backbone than this little thing.

So easy to dismiss! But it also made me sad. I had thought, being perfected, that I would be irresistible. I had thought, since I was chosen for him, that Edward would have made an acceptable match. He was smart; I was smart. He was beautiful; I was beautiful ... and I was _so_ beautiful ... I was _already_ beautiful as a human. Turned, I was indescribable.

So, it _had_ to be an excellent match, no? Certainly Edward had room to improve — his temper could be better, and he could be much more attentive to me — but I'm sure he would grow into his rôle with time. Despite all his failings, he was gentlemanly when he made the effort. He knew how to treat a lady, and I was so much a lady. Alive, I was the "Belle of Rochester". Eternal, I was more beautiful than any person and even than any vampire. He could not but be entirely besotted with me, no?

But no. He seemed sufficient unto himself, as he said. Or, more accurately, he was a self-centered, conceited, smug brat, arrogantly resting on his little gift and the fawning of his "parents".

As a brother, he wasn't all that bad, he had helped me, training me to eliminate the men who violated me. And when he did inform me of his disinterest, he emphatically stressed his brotherly care for me, and that he had in no way rejected me because I had been tainted in my violation. Very courtly of him to say, and, again, I admired him, as a brother, for saying that. But it still did not change anything: my outside may have been enchanting, but inside I was eternally damaged, eternally broken, and everyone could somehow see it, ... somehow feel it. Edward wouldn't admit it, or was too kind or too gentlemanly to admit it, but I saw that he could see that it had even tainted my mind. For eternity. Like I said: the gift of immortality is actually our curse.

The girl interrupted my ruminations, whimpered in my arms, suffering aftershocks of her emotional trauma, no doubt. I shifted slightly so that now I was lying on my back, and turned her so she was again in crook of my arm, cradled and facing into me, instead of facing away from me as before. I rubbed her back some more, and she sighed, relaxing into a deeper sleep.

Her slight movement stirred the inescapable miasma of her scent, and it wafted through the room, strengthened considerably by her emissions in the outhouse ... well, _mostly_ in the outhouse. My hand _still_ tingled, even after holding it in the fire a good three minutes to erase all trace of that glorious, wondrous, _delicious_ scent in her urine ... waste water created by the action of the liver and kidneys scouring the blood ... waste water that, because she was in the third phase of her cycle, actually contained more than mere traces of her blood. Her lavender- and freesia-scented blood. Blood pulsating right now in her ... _stop it. _I was relieved that her neck was out of sight and out of easy reach: her head resting on my shoulder, radiating that heat that warmed my entire body. Her lying thus required me to think first before I could lift her neck to my mouth. This was a good thing. If I had to think first, I had a much better chance of stopping myself before I committed an act that would echo throughout eternity.

If I were to take her life ... wait, I meant to say: _When_ I take her life, it will be a considered action bringing my entire set of faculties to bear on the matter. I _shall_ not be driven by impulse, instinct or desire. I _am_ Rosalie Lillian Hale, and I _am above_ all such baser motivations that so drive lesser creatures. _Only_ at the right time. Yes, I am trapped in this eternal Now, and when that Now comes, then, _and only then,_ will I act.

If you, dear reader, are a human, I have to beg of you one simple thing: enjoy each second that passes you, as far as you are able. For you, swimming in the sea of time, each second comes and then goes, never to return to you. For me, trapped in the eternal Now, but also a prisoner of Time, each second _never leaves me_. Each second is a new link forging the chains of my punishment. Human, enjoy your time, and enjoy its passing ... as I cannot.

She had apologized profusely in that heartfelt manner of hers, weeping until I eased her into this fitful sleep, but she apologized for the wrong thing, as usual. She thought she had committed a grievous offense — certainly if I had still been human I suppose I would have been offended to have her urine fall on my hand, even though her action was nearly involuntary — and her apology was directed toward that.

But I am a vampire now. I hunted every day in my first days as a new born, and the frequency tapered off to once every two weeks as I do now. Well, as I _should be doing_ now: I'm actually hunting every day again, thanks to my brown-eyed captive. I have killed over four hundred animals so far in this eternity. On top of that I've murdered seven men. What does an animal (I lump those "men" with the other animals, although I'm insulting my prey for doing that, as those "men" insulted humanity simply by existing) do when it's being slaughtered by a predator? Everything it can to find a way to live: it will run, struggle, vomit, urinate, defecate, ... it will do anything in its fight to survive. Against me, it will fail. But I had to acquire the skill of diving for the neck in such a way that when the animal was excreting, it did not go all over me. Those first more than ten times an animal and I would roll as I pounced on its neck, and I would end wearing much more than the blood that had spurted out from the large gash, escaping my lips. I would have to get rid of the clothes and occupy the shower for quite a long time ... after I had had myself thoroughly hosed down outside already. I had seen and felt more than the little squirt of urine that so crushed this girl with shame.

What she should have been apologizing for is that luscious scent that she left on my hand. I had to keep it away from me, from anything, because I did not wish to leave that strong of a mark for me to stumble across later. Fortunately, my hand now has no pores ... imagine if I would have absorbed that? Her smell was already overpowering — _and I wasn't even breathing! _— if I had absorbed those chemical traces, it might have started a frenzy with only one obvious conclusion.

Although I wasn't breathing, her scent still sent tendrils up my nostrils and sat on the back of my tongue. I swallowed the venom that pooled in my mouth, again. I had done this so often that I was rather getting used to the pain it caused as it slid down my throat, searing my insides as it went. Venom is not meant to be swallowed by the predator; venom is meant to be injected into the prey. And I _was_ the predator, and this little girl in my arms _was_ the prey. There was simply no use ignoring these facts. To do so would be delusional, and my eyes, since the change, had been made to see things with abundant clarity. My transformation had even eliminated the cigarette burn in my iris that Royce left me as a parting gift.

Yes, his death had been very slow: eight hours, forty-seven minutes, twelve seconds. And I made sure during that time at least once every ten seconds that he was reintroduced either to an old friend, or a new one. Both were named Pain.

Yes, I could now see clearly, but, apparently, clarity of thinking did not follow clarity of vision. Take Edward, for example, totally ignoring the danger and deciding to play human to entertain this girl. Take the Cullens, Carlisle and Esme, blindly following their beloved son's lead, as if this was some reprieve for the dark years he _chose_ to live as a true monster, drinking from humans, left and right, both in the New World and the Old. I did have to hand it to him: nothing escaped our dear Edward when he crossed paths with it.

I would just have to make sure I steered clear from him, then, wouldn't I? I couldn't imagine him being all that happy that I took away his little play toy, his little infatuation. I _was_ doing him a tremendous favor and service, but I didn't foresee him pausing long enough for me to explain the situation. He would simply pounce, that that would be it. Although I am eternal and indestructible, I'm sure Edward would find a way. I'm sure he already has on others. He must have crossed paths with more than one vampire in his nomadic years, yet it was always Edward who walked away, it was Edward who had returned the prodigal son. The other vampires? I had asked him when we were family, but he avoided the topic. If I met Edward again, I'm sure I would find out from direct experience what happened to them.

But if seeing clearly was a problem for my eagle-eyed "family", then in fact this little pitiable thing didn't see all that clearly, if at all, when it came to herself or to our kind ... or to me. Filled with gratitude to _me? _Calling me _kind?_ I thought it was actually a cruel joke when she added that caveat of _kind __vampire_. But then she kept saying it and saying it, and, incredibly, kept acting on it as if it were real.

Really! Me? _Kind?_ The girl was obviously blind. She moaned again in her sleep, and I rubbed her back again to rid from her mind whatever nightmare plagued her.

And then she decided she needed "to hook me up", as she called it. Typical of her, so entirely missing the point! As if a _man_ would be the solution to any of my problems ... as if I had any, _which I don't! _

Well, I have one little problem; I gently stroked her hair.

If I had the air to spare in my lungs, I would sigh now. But I don't have air to spare, so the sigh will have to come at another time. Although I only have this one problem in my arms, I _do_ have a few issues. One of them being frustration, thanks to my little matchmaker here and her escapades. Actually, her offer wouldn't be such a bad idea ... I need something to shred right about now, and, as she posed, a big teddy bear vampire would shred quite satisfactorily. Unless it were Edward, then I would be the one in the process of being shredded. Well, that, too, would take care of my frustrations, albeit in quite a different manner.

And, calling Edward and me _catty? _ _Fine! we're catty!_ But saying this as she's rubbing her entire body on me like some, well, cat in heat? And then reciting her list of "Rosalie Improvement Projects" right into my breast with her eyes closed? I felt a tautness from the vibrations from her lips. And then _nuzzling_ me, _humming_ as she did this? I was sure the reactions she was causing in me were not motivated by conscious intent on her part, so I shifted my position before things got out of hand.

You should have seen her reaction to that: it was if I had just stolen the teething ring from a babe in a perambulator! She howled, grabbed me, and rearranged herself so that we were pretty much in same position as the one we had started from except now her arm covered my stomach and her leg captured mine, her feet continuously rubbing my calves and shins. It would take a serious and unsubtle effort to change this position, but I did not wish to break her calm. I had begun seriously to suspect the innocence of this arrangement. But she was blind even in this, lapsing into an intoxicated sleep soon thereafter.

I hope this sleep of hers would cover over the things she did and said this night. I, as a vampire, will never lose my memories and also see everything so clearly. This little girl has neither gift. But she does have a surprising knack of seeing things that others do not, and keeping things in her heart that she should just let go. Yes, it would be so in keeping with everything else for her to remember these dreams of her idealized "Rose" and to have her feelings so bent by these perceptions.

So in keeping. I would watch and listen carefully this morning for that tell-tale pause at the first syllable of my name. She may think she has some kind of feeling for me, but this is simply an illusion she has cast on herself. She may see me as some kind of savior to her, but I am not her salvation: I am to be her destruction. I will not allow her incorrect perception to affect me. I cannot. I must not.

Besides, I have no feelings for her. None whatsoever.

She tosses in her sleep, kicking off her blanket and then shivers slightly from the chill that my body caused hers, even in this heated cabin. I wrap the blanket around her again: she needs this rest to recover from the shocks she has suffered this last day.

* * *

**A/N:** One of Royce's actions, that of putting out his cigarette in Rosalie's eye, was taken from chapter 5 of "The Laurel's Defiance" by ljv. It is a much darker piece than this one in describing Rosalie's violation. The inspiration that Rosalie excels in mathematics also comes from that piece: chapter 6. In describing Rosalie's thoughts, it is an excellent piece: I highly recommend it. That Rosalie has an M.D. is canonical.


	4. Transformation: Esme

**Chapter summary:** One of the many things vampires shouldn't do is to play "house". _All_ vampires are islands, and it's best that they stay that way. Of course, Esme doesn't really count as a vampire, though. Esme, the 'mommy' vampire! Does she even drink blood?

**WARNING! **Contains a very suggestive and visceral description of the murder of a mother and child by a newborn vampire.

* * *

This was turning into the normal family routine. You know the kind, yes? The kind I was supposed to have. The husband would come through the door, all smiles, announcing: "Honey, I'm home!" after earning the family's daily bread. And the wife would sweep in from the kitchen, holding the latest infant in her arms, pecking the husband on the cheek. "Dinner's on the table, dear!" she would sing.

A normal family, like I said, like Vera has ... like I should have had.

What I do have is not normal, and is not a family. It is, however, my just reward.

So, like the husband in the normal family, I would return to the cabin, "earning the daily bread", by hunting ... meaning, by not killing the girl. And like the wife in that normal family, the girl would give me her extraordinary greeting. In her case, it would be by drowning, or by freezing, or, in the last case, by choking, but always by dying. That and baked goods were her specialities. So, instead of smoking a pipe after dinner as the husband would do in a normal family, my routine would be to restore life to the girl, primarily by not killing her first ... again.

_Primus non nocere, _and all that. I wonder how many times each day Carlisle recites this precept. Yesterday, I had to pause three times to say it. Three times. One time because she was begging me to take her.

A vampire as a life-saver. One would think there could not be a _non sequitur_ as profound as that. One would think that, but in light of the fact that Carlisle has been a _practicing surgeon_ for over one hundred years, the profundity shifts to something else entirely: _vampires preserving lives._

To get my M.D. I "interned" with Carlisle, so I never was exposed to any risk. Now, with this girl I was beginning to appreciate the enormity of what he was doing. Every day. Voluntarily.

And, after saving her life, am I done? Oh no, nothing is ever easy with this little strawberries and crème brûlée! You would figure she would be grateful enough having her heart restarted or her diaphragm moving again ... or both, but then comes needs to tend to the hypothermia, in the first two cases, or the "hold me, mommy" in the last two.

I'm not quite sure "hold me, mommy" is medical condition, but it should be, because she surely has it in a bad way. I wonder if a cure would to give her a spoonful of castor oil every day. Actually, that might backfire on me, as the frequency of her needs "to go" would increase. _Grrrr!_ This little thing was just so _needy!_

But in all cases, whatever she _was_ wearing at the time before her attempted trip into the next world turned out to be a hinderance for her staying in this one. Each and every time she dances with death, I've had to strip her and clothe her with something that would help her live a bit longer, not a bit shorter.

The first time I stripped her was after her little swim in the Belle Fourche. I restarted her heart and her breathing, but the wet clothes were stealing her life as they stole her body heat. I stripped off her top fully intending to do the same for her bottom and then wrap her in a blanket. But I stopped at her top, confused out of my action.

I thought she was a girl. The evidence before me said otherwise.

Well, I guess they could be called breasts. And she was female; I could still taste the estrogen from her saliva. Perhaps she was much younger than I first thought? Twelve, maybe? ... or even ... ten? I stripped off her bottom. No, she was a fully mature female. In fact, coming up on Phase III of her cycle. _Hm_, I thought, _this is going to be a problem._

I wish I could look forward as clearly as I see back. That way I could have seen me now shredding me then. A _"problem"?_ The understatement overwhelmed me.

Looking at her, I could not help but wonder if perhaps Edward was threatened by the female form. Perhaps that's why he didn't see me, or any other woman, as a potential mate. He had said he was self-sufficient. Maybe he was just scared of women? And too scared to admit it? He was, when it came down to it, just a boy.

I also wondered how she would ever be able to bear and to raise a child. Her whole form was just too small and too flat to survive carrying and delivering an infant. The baby would be just too demanding on her frame, probably consuming her from the inside during gestation and tearing her apart during the delivery.

Not that it mattered for her anymore, with my intentions. _Not that it mattered for me anymore, either._ I carried the regrets of those twin thoughts as I wrapped the vital areas of her body in a blanket so the little heat she did generate would be retained and help her fight off the hypothermia, then I wrapped her major heat diffusers in wet, warm cloths I had created by shredding her clothes and heating them on the stove.

I did not then make the connection that we were connected in this shared loss. We both would never see our own children.

Then I stopped in shock. She would _never_ see her own children? _Never say never._ What if she did bear a child? How would that change things? What would happen if instead of her cycle continuing onto Phase III in the next week, that it simply stopped for nine months? What if she were pregnant right now? Would that change anything?

That would change everything.

I could kill this girl because her inquisitive mind had pieced together what we are. I would kill her. But if she were pregnant? Would I kill the child, too? I knew what _the_ answer must be — one law, no exceptions — the child and the mother must die. But I knew what _my_ answer would be. I would preserve this new mother's life, and I would preserve the preborn child's life. Consequences be damned. I would be forced to keep them separate and hidden for the rest of their natural lives, but my task of killing this girl would turn on its head if she were with child. I would take on the whole world, because this girl under my power would now be under my protection. And, come what may — human rescuers, nomadic vampires, the Cullens, or the Volturi — I would take them on, individually or as groups, and I would destroy them all.

Neither man nor vampire touches a Hale or what belongs to a Hale. Seven men found that out, and seven million more would if they came for this one. With her child. A child under my care. A child I could never have. Her child ... my child.

I could have the child call me _Aunt Rosie_ when it learnt to speak. If I were clever enough, it would never know I am a vampire, that way I could release it when it came of age, keeping the mother with me, and I could visit my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren, and my ... They would never get to see me, of course — I would be discreet — but I would check on them from time to time. Loving their silly human triumphs and failings from a distance.

I knew I would because this creature in my arms had enough silly foibles to echo across more than several generations. Not that I loved her foibles, mind you, because, obviously, I didn't love her. They were just funny to watch sometimes. Like when she was making comfortable bedding to lie down in the snow.

Silly girl.

You may cry _injustice_ at this, claiming that the girl was an innocent just as much as her unborn child. So I couldn't very easily claim to be able to kill the one and turn around and so viciously defend the same one for the sake of the other. I would agree that it _is_ an injustice, but I wouldn't agree with your equivocation. Besides you could say whatever you would like, argue with whichever force you desired, but the time for talk would have passed from the moment I had determined my charge was carrying a child. You could speak if you desired, but if you did anything more than that, pieces of you would decorate the forest floor in pretty red patterns ... or pretty pale patterns if you were a vampire. Emphasis on the past tense.

I realized I had become so worked up over a possibility that may not actually be. I was so used to having the unexpected occurring with such regularly that I had just started making plans around this impossible case, because the impossible case always seemed to materialize with this creature. I could wait a week or two to see if her period arrived, but what if she had a naturally prolonged cycle? I didn't think I would go insane with the anticipation, but the situation — me watching over this deliciously tempting treat — was already precariously balanced. I removed the make-shift loincloth and probed very gently and carefully.

The hymen was intact.

Of course, the absence of the hymen, her maidenhead, didn't prove anything, because sometimes it would disappear through normal stresses of growth and aging as the girl matured into the child-bearing age. But its presence _was_ a very strong indicator: history had not recorded many virgin births, and I was pretty sure this girl, albeit special, wasn't going to brighten the night sky with a star for her child.

I was pretty sure this little thing in my arms was not destined to be the queen of the world. I would have breathed a sigh of relief then, but her scent was already too strong, and the taste of her saliva had my mouth swimming in venom.

I returned the loincloth to cover her vaginal region and bundled her back into the blanket, allowing the small amount of heat her own body produced pull her out of the shock of hypothermia. So it was back on track: no need to defy the Volturi for the sake of a child this girl was not having.

The perhaps-not-Queen-of-the-world recovered well that time. Not the least bit of screaming.

Not like the next time.

Her deaths became progressively more ludicrous. It was if she needed to become more inventive each time with the way she tried to meet her demise. This time it wasn't going for a swim in the river to avoid wolves. That was at least reasonable, I suppose. No, this time it was an endurance test: _how far can I walk in the snow in socks before I succumb? _The former near death was obviously accidental, but the latter? Definitely by design.

The answer to her test question: one and three quarters miles. The outhouse, by the way, is less than a half a mile from the cabin.

_She's quite the walker!_ Or stumbler, as that was what she did just as I caught sight of her body following her scent blazing a trail through the forest. It was if she were handed her own can of yellow paint to divide the highways springing up all over the country. That's how easy her scent is to follow. That's how alluring it is to me; it draws me right in.

When I say 'highways springing up all over the country', I actually mean springing up all over the _populated parts_ of the country. _Of course,_ the Cullens had to pick the most backwater part of the U.S.A. for their next haunt. I _knew_ they did it just to punish me.

_Let's create a new vampire and see how long she lasts before she goes insane._

No servants. No amenities. No comforts. No entertainments. No diversions. No plays or assemblies — _"Oh, you might accidently expose us, Rosalie, with your uncontrolled bloodlust!" __Please!_ I wasn't Esme, for goodness sake.

Worse: no respect. No consideration.

All I had to console me was just my revenge. Which I would have taken even past their objections.

And then the last straw: this little thing.

I should be furious at her for casting me adrift, and, originally, I was. But now I was feeling a bit of gratitude. Almost all my kind were nomads: it was the Cullens who were the freaks. The more vampires together in one place, the more unstable the situation became. And this situation would have exploded if I hadn't stepped in when I did.

Yes, this situation. After I picked her up from the snow, I had to take emergency measures. She had started a trek to the outhouse, and I brought her there first. I shouldn't have. She had already excreted what she needed to on her odyssey, and her body temperature was dropping too quickly. She still had her heartbeat and respiratory functions, but that only lulled me into acting later than I should. When I did act, it was almost too late.

I held her near lifeless body near the stove, tenting the blanket around her to force as much heat as possible to work its way back into her. She screamed the whole time. It seemed like hours and hours of screaming, and each scream cut through me, like as if I were human again, and each scream was a knife slashing through my stomach.

I don't know which was worse, however: her screams, or the complete listlessness of her body. The sounds should have been accompanied by an arching of her back or by a tensing of muscle groups, but the thing I held could have just been a bit more of the blanket, the way she hung there. Eventually, she couldn't even scream anymore and the air just went in and out of her in silent spent gasps of agony.

I remember my transformation, of course, but I experienced it first hand. She was not going through a transformation — I hadn't injected her blood stream with venom — but seeing this as an observer ... I just didn't know what to do except hold her away from me toward the stove.

What I wanted to do was not to hold her away from me but to hold her into me. To cradle her in my arms, to take away her pain, or at least to tell her that the pain would recede, that it would get better. She was naked, both because she was unclothed but also because she was fully vulnerable, fully open, fully present. I saw her naked pain. But, deeper than that, I saw her soul — naked? No. _Revealed!_ — and saw that it was beautiful, even in her agony. I wanted to kiss her and to make it all better. To give her some comfort, some strength to make it through this agony that just wouldn't go away for the longest time for her in her mortal swim through time. The pain that would never go away for me trapped in eternity. Even now, ever now, as I do cradle this sleeping girl in my arms, comforting her, her screams then still shake my very being now, as the beauty of her soul still pierces me. I envied her her sleep, and I was grateful that she had it to escape from those screams, to be healed by that sleep. To wake to face a new day refreshed and revitalized.

I will never again face new days. I am always face-to-face with this unrelenting Now. I would never be revitalized. I am always just an animated shell: lifeless. No, not lifeless: dead. I am dead; I am Death.

And that's primarily why I could not comfort her through her screams. It _wasn't_ going to get better for her. With me, it can only get worse: the closer she draws to me is the closer she draws to Death.

And I could not kiss her to comfort her, because vampires, as a rule, do not touch. We don't shake hands, we don't embrace each other in hugs, we do not kiss. Well, we only kiss after we, as vampires, have been changed at-most-only-once. The change from a solitary being to an eternally paired one. In our little Cullen "family" only Carlisle has made that irrevocable change. And it was rather disgusting to watch how he dotes over his little wifey. Esme didn't even go through a change at all. What was there to change? She had already had stars in her eyes for her Carlisle from when she was a human girl.

I worry about Esme. I really do. No human had ever volunteered to become what we are. It was only the very recent trash that has been circulating through the literature these days that had started to put a romantic fog over the eyes of humanity. What reaction does saying the word vampire now elicit? Swooning and desire. What reaction did it elicit not even one hundred years ago? Brands and pitchforks. Living in time was not always advantageous, for I could never unknowingly repeat a mistake or forget a lesson. People these days: _ooh! Vampire! Bite me and love me tenderly in your cold embrace!_

_Oh, I'll bite you alright! ... three days of excruciating pain and an eternity of never satisfied want coming right up! That is, if I can stop myself from finishing you off first._

But that's what Esme would have signed up for if she wasn't already knocking at death's door ... pounding on it, actually. If she had seen Carlisle before she jumped off that cliff, she would have leapt right into his arms instead off the cliff's side. And she would have asked him to change her right then and there, _not _because she was blinded by some romantic notion of vampirism, but because she wished to be with him, by his side, forever. Right as she is now. She got exactly what she always wanted: being Carlisle's vampire-wife.

That's the first reason I worried about her. She had her head screwed on backward: seeing this curse for what it is and embracing it with open eyes and opened heart.

The next reason was that although she embraced her new existence, she couldn't properly be called a vampire, because she failed at being a vampire in every single way possible. Vampires don't touch. She's always touching Carlisle, obviously. She touches him in every single way possible: her hands brush against him, she embraces him, she kisses him. Of course. But then her eyes don't necessarily stay glued to him, because they do leave him from time to time, but only on the occasions when she knows exactly where he is. If she doesn't know, she looks first with her eyes and ears and nose, and then, if she can't sense him, she drops her knitting needles and leaves her chair searching until she knows where he is again.

Carlisle works long hours at whichever hospital he joins, out of necessity: he must travel during the dark. So, from 5:30 am to 8:59:59 pm Esme busies herself about the house, making the perfectly cleaned mansion more perfectly cleaned. But at 9 pm — two bells — she starts looking at the door.

I had told her, on several occasions, that it takes time for Carlisle to leave his office, that he wouldn't just appear after just finishing his shift. Esme would nod to me absentmindedly. Sometimes she could even tear herself away from looking at the door. Sometimes.

When Carlisle _is_ home I don't know how he can keep up with his reading. Esme often _just happens_ to be cleaning the house near his study. _"Study"._ More like _"lab_", as in _"lab partners" _conducting _"experiments"._

Totally besotted. You would figure after fifteen years of marriage she would regain some measure of dignity ...

I was glad I was a newborn. It would have been difficult to come up with reasons for hunting on Carlisle's days off after a while. Edward seemed to need to help me improve my hunting techniques those days as well, I noticed. We also used that away time to practice out of Carlisle's and Esme's oversight. They didn't seem too keen on me slowly destroying pigs, preparation work for my plan to destroy those five swine in the shape of humans.

And on the subject of hunting: Esme didn't. If she were capable of crying, she would ... at every single animal she killed. And then taking the blood from the animal ... on several occasions I was tempted to ask her if she wanted me to finish that for her. I think the only reason she hunted was because she was afraid she would be kicked out of the house if she didn't take care of herself.

Vampire speed? Vampire agility? It only showed up for her when she attacked Carlisle at the door. Or surprised Edward with a hug. One time ... _one time!_ ... Edward lifted up his arms to touch the back of her shoulders — Edward didn't like to touch or be touched ... which is funny, seeing as he's such a touchy bastard — I thought, when he returned that _one_ hug she was going to explode with joy, and we'd be picking up Esme-pieces all over the house for _weeks._

_Oh, look, I found her right index finger, right here by the table leg!_

She gave me hugs, too. But it was just a matter of form. I could feel it in her body language: _oh! I guess I'd better hug Rosalie, even though I don't want to, ... she is living with our family after all ..._

I didn't like to be touched, either. So I had to hold back the reflex to shred her, or to scream in her face: _"Do NOT touch me!"_ I don't think she'd like either response, and she'd pretend to act all hurt — she had that act down pat — and then I would never catch the end of it from the Cullen boys: _Esme doesn't want to make a scene, but when you shouted at her ... _blah-blah-blah. She acts all weak and motherly, but she has both of those fools under her thumb. I see her playing those games that our sex plays to make men do exactly what we want them to do.

I let her get by with some of those _"I'll be the mommy and you'll be the daughter"_ games, but one game I cut short right quick. One time she called me 'Rose'.

Only people who love me call me 'Rose'. _Nobody_ calls me 'Rose' now.

Royce had called me 'Rose' when he courted me. I let him do that, flattered with his attention.

Royce called me 'Rose' as he ripped my legs apart to break his way through my virginity, shoving my panties aside because he was too stupid with drink to form the first tear to rip them, and too uncoordinated to pull them down. Then, after he stood up from his handiwork, Royce called me 'Rose' when his well-aimed kick cracked my ribs. Apparently, the cigarette branding my eye wasn't a clear enough message for me. A bit of _fun_ for the boys and a big send-off for me, don't you know, the week before the wedding.

Royce had called me 'Rose' then. I am _never_ going to allow anyone that close to me again.

Nobody calls me 'Rose'. _Nobody._

_Except tonight._ Yes, except tonight, but the girl could be excused. She was deep in sleep and didn't know what she was saying. She could be talking about the flower, for all I know.

Yes, _nobody _call me 'Rose'. Esme got that message loud and clear. She called me 'Rosalie' after that. But she still gave me hugs, even tighter ones after that little talk. No, I spared her the details, but she still got a very clear message from me. And she seemed to find a way to make my suffering just another reason for her to play _mommy._

Esme, the 'mommy' vampire.

She seemed entirely beyond herself, the way she fawned over Carlisle, Edward, and even me. But if she ever tried anything on me, I knew the one thing that would touch her. The one thing I could say to her that would entirely crush her: _Anne Hansen's baby._

Oh, yes. I could joke about Esme not being a vampire, but Anne Hansen and her baby couldn't. Not anymore. When the Cullens were living Greater Ada, Michigan with their brand-newborn addition to the family. Esme stayed indoors, of course, under the pretense that she was blind. Red eyes aren't considered fashionable these days, I should know. Of course, neighbors want to be neighborly, don't they? So while all the husbands were off to work, little Mrs. Anne decided to pay her new blind neighbor a visit, to check up on her. Maybe she brought biscuits, too, as her last act. Just like the girl in my arm did.

And babies. Everybody _loves _babies, right? And you can't leave little Dick in the crib.

Or maybe it was little Jane?

Yummy. Babies. Very tasty. Not that I would ever do that, even after my very first day of transformation. I have _never_ tasted human blood. And babies are a concept a little too close to the bone for me to consider. Like they should have been for Esme.

But Esme was a newborn ...

I wonder if she burst through the door and took them on the porch as poor Mrs. Anne walked up to ring the bell.

Or maybe. Maybe Esme invited them in. You know, for some tea to go with the biscuits and the blood. Maybe Esme invited them in, so that she could satisfy her thirst with a nice, long, slow, leisurely drink. Maybe she held the baby while she drank the mommy. Maybe she held the baby while she drank him.

Or her.

I'd have to ask the 'mommy' vampire that question, when she decided to cross me.

The Cullens had to leave that day, of course. Anne Hansen and baby are nice and safe in the basement under twenty feet of earth ... beneath the freshly repoured foundation. Missing persons. Just like my little missing person right here.

But, of course, Esme wouldn't cross me. She couldn't: it was antithetical to her very nature. And, upon reflection, I would _never_ use this bludgeon against Esme, even if she were bent on my destruction, which she wasn't. A lady never cheapened herself by descending to such mean, such common, such vile invective. A lady sees and compliments the good qualities of others ... and makes herself _better than_ by _improving on_ not by _detracting from._ And I am a lady. I am a Hale, after all.

But, when I entertained this newfound knowledge, this newfound power over Esme, Edward happened by.

The shocked look on his face was the last I saw of him, the last any of us saw of him, for four days. Mommy Cullen started to worry that her little Edward had back-slid, returning to his dark days. Dark, not because he killed humans, they forgave him that, but dark, because he had left them for so long. They ... forgave him for that, too. But they tended to watch him, and to watch over him more these days.

It wasn't always bleak for me and the Cullens, and I didn't always dwell on the ending of my humanity or my new family's dark histories. We would sometimes have fun, the Cullen family and I. We would play tag. Edward always won. So we switched the games to 'Fox and Hounds'. Edward always won. We're fast ... well, except Esme, of course ... but Edward makes 'fast' seem like 'standing still'. Plus he's got that little gift of his. _He_ would make a game out of the game. I saw him keeping an internal score: how many times he could make us collide with each other when we made a lunge for him. He gave himself bonus points if all three of us got into a scrum.

So we changed the game again. Escort. Edward had ensure Esme went from one end of our hunting range to the back door of our new house under her own power. Fifty miles, so it would be a fast game ... well, an hour, because Esme wasn't all that fast — it took her _a whole seventy seconds _to run a mile ... like I said: Esme thinks molasses runs too fast. We had a rule for this game. Rule number one: _no carrying! _We couldn't catch him even if he was carrying an extra load of a half-ton vampire _mommy._ All Carlisle and I had to do was to tag her. A _really_ easy game for us. _Tagging Esme?_ Come on! A _really_ hard game for Edward. He looked forward to winning as much as we did. Well, his "team" looked forward to it.

Edward and Esme actually high-fived before the start of the game. _Those Cullens. _Well, it was Edward and Esme, so they were _dainty_ high-fives. _Go Team Edward!_ I snorted as I watched their pep rally.

Team Edward almost won. Almost. _My dear brother_ handily took me and Carlisle out time and again as we lunged at Esme. We thought we were smart, because we were staggering our attack against Esme from opposite sides, making it, we thought, impossible for Edward to take us both down. With Edward most impossibilities aren't even challenging. But as Esme got closer and closer to the door, miles disappearing under her feet, we decided to rethink our strategy. We both lunged at her: Carlisle from above, me, attempting to knock her over with a flanking attack.

Edward took me out, of course, but Carlisle was wily: he was picturing Esme from the side and thinking _'flank, flank, flank!'_ as he fell from an obliging pine. Edward reading the misdirection with his gift totally misjudged Carlisle's position and leapt away from his father. Edward relies too much on his gift. I tell him that sometimes, but he's too far above me to listen to my girlish nonsense. That cost him the game. He _would have won_ if he simply used his _'normal'_ vampire senses and his extraordinary speed. You rely too much on one weapon, and eventually you'll get shot by it.

Carlisle landed on Esme like an avalanche, mere feet from the finish line.

"We win! Finally!" he crowed, and did a herky-jerky victory dance that only a bookworm like Carlisle could do. Esme giggled. She was so happy one of the teams won, even if it wasn't her team.

Like I said, I worry about Esme. I think something went wrong with her transformation. Maybe she didn't become a vampire at all and was just faking it to be by Carlisle's side? Me, I would have shredded a vampire landing on top of me, not giggled.

His herky-jerky dance was hilarious, though, I did have to admit that point.

Edward shook his head in disgust, but then he froze. I looked over at him, curiosity overcoming my delight.

"Um, let's go hunting, Rosalie." It was our first week in Ekalaka, and I did need to hunt, especially after that visit from that sweet little thing Edward brought by my room, but he had already hunted just before dawn. _Why did he ...?_

I looked where Edward was refusing to look. Carlisle and Esme had started celebrating the victory. Right there on the lawn.

Edward and I went hunting. We came back that night, but we actually had to turn right back into the woods. Edward suggested it would be a good idea to explore farther afield. _Much_ farther afield. My hearing confirmed his hint. Carlisle and Esme were now celebrating in their bedroom. I didn't think the lip-smacking sounds and the _"Oh, Carlisle!"_ sounds were Esme's pleasure at adding in a solarium.

Her joy was architecture, but her, _ahem, _pleasure was currently excited by an entirely different field of study. Dr. Carlisle was playing "doctor" with _Nurse Esme._

Rabbits, I tell you: just like rabbits, those two.

I'd give her maybe two seconds on the outside. She'd last a whole two seconds without her Carlisle.

As a vampire, Esme never changed: she _always loved_ Carlisle, from the beginning of her existence as a vampire, her love for him was her defining trait. As a vampire, Carlisle _had_ to change to love Esme, for she hadn't existed yet to meet him for almost three hundred years. Once changed, though, a vampire solidified into that change, permanently. Humans fall in and out of what they call 'love' so easily. Vampires don't have a choice. Vampires _never _have a choice. We are trapped in our eternity, and when we love, we are trapped in that, too. _Forever._

You don't believe me? Carlisle told me about one of the Volturi. Marcus. He had loved his mate, Didyme, for two thousand years. Imagine that: loving someone with the devotion Carlisle and Esme show each other for two thousand years.

Loving forever as if in that first moment of true love. Wonderful, isn't it?

She was destroyed nearly fifteen hundred years ago. He would have followed her, but the Volturi is a triumvirate, so he was not allowed to destroy himself, as that would throw the balance of power askew. He has sat and waited for her impossible return, neither moving nor speaking through _each and every day of the last fifteen hundred years._ He will sit and wait for her another fifteen hundred years, fifteen hundred times over. Once a vampire loves, a vampire loves forever.

Loving forever. Still think it's so wonderful?

If I were to kiss this girl, then that would mean I loved her. And I cannot love her. I simply cannot. So I could not comfort the girl in my arm in this way.

Besides, if I were to love her, it would make my task rather difficult, now, wouldn't it?

As I completed this ironic thought, my eternity flashed an image in front of my eyes. I held the girl at arms length in the forest not too far from the Belle Fourche river then I brought her to me, kissing her one cheek. Then I raced around her and then brought her to me again, kissing her other cheek.

I had kissed her. I had already kissed her twice.

The girl shifted in my arms, and, as earlier this night, she wrapped her arm around my chest ... embracing me possessively in her sleep.

I knew these next thoughts I was about to think were to be the most critical thoughts of my existence, binding me for eternity ... or not.

I had kissed her. Vampires kissed the ones they loved. Therefore, I lo-...

No, wait. I didn't start that thought correctly.

Did I kiss her? Did I _really_ kiss her?

Yes.

No. No, it wasn't a _real_ kiss. A _real_ kiss was one motivated by the force of affection, comfort, ... love. When my lips touched her cheeks then — _not really kissing her_ — the expression was motivated by my relief and exuberance of releasing myself from those Cullens. Put it this way, spend a year in solitary, you may just kiss your horse when you're let out. Just an abundance of relief and release. So, my action had absolutely _nothing_ to do with _any_ feeling of affection I had for the girl.

I _hadn't really _kissed her.

The relief I felt was close to the rush I had felt earlier this evening when this inquisitive, playful, feisty girl _who I did not love_ under the force of her dreams ...

Well, I can think about that moment later. I do have an eternity. The important point is that I do not love her.

Yet.

_Where did that come from?_

I said: _I do __not__ love her!_

... Yet.

This was becoming worrisome. _Edward_ heard voices in his head, and that was because of his gift. _I_ am a _Hale, _and I am in complete control of my mind.

_I do not love her. Full stop. That's it._

I waited, concentrating with all my might to maintain the mental silence. Nothing. Good. Mentally, I breathed out a relieved sigh from my empty lungs.

...

... Yet.

My mental sigh almost turned into a real scream.

Okay. _Fine._

There are things that I can control, and things that I cannot. I do not love her yet. Fine. I can work with that, too. My not loving her yet was still as freeing for me in this moment of the eternal now as my not loving her ever. All I had to do was to make sure that _'yet'_ never arrived. Simplicity itself.

I mean, not that there wasn't anything to love. The depth of her eyes reflected the depth of her feeling, and that slip of a body I had first seen really hid a beauty that required true admiration to see past the world's flawed sense of lustful eroticism to perceive the real classic, shy, vibrant ...

I wasn't helping my case here. The point was that she had a flawed perception of me. She worshiped me as some kind of guardian angel. Obviously wrong. All I had to do was to keep my distance from her so I would not allow my feelings to be muddled by her adulation and to help her realize that I am truly a monster: not something to admire; no, something to fear, something to hate, something to despise.

Because.

Because I am hateful. I am despicable. I am to be feared. After all, I am a bloodthirsty, murderous monster. An automaton set on a singular course of destruction. That is the sum total of all that I am: _blood-thirst-blood-thirst-blood-thirst._

I would fix this course before my eyes. She would see the error of her ways and distance herself from me, and that would help me to keep her from loving her yet ... indefinitely. Indefinitely, that is, until I murdered her, too.

Not like Royce. _Of course, not like Royce._ Her purity deserved ... well, everything. But at least I could give her a quick, merciful killing, and her pure soul would at least have a chance at Heaven.

God would be grateful for the gift. _He'd better be!_ I'd _absolutely shred_ Him otherwise.

There. That was easy. See? I don't love her.

... yet.

Well, relatively easy.

That's what I thought. I had no idea that this relatively easy resolution, that required everything I had to keep myself free from becoming entangled in this girl's snare was _nothing_ to what I was about to face when I came back from a little foodstuffs gathering trip to keep the girl alive.

She was always such a surprising creature.

* * *

Rosalie's thoughts of Esmé, are they accurate? Perhaps. Do they do her a disservice? Perhaps. But perhaps a greater disservice to Esmé is not to think of her at all, that is: to take her for granted (see my thoughts about Esmé on my blog at twilight-dad(dot)blogspot(dot)com).

At least Rosalie does Esmé the honor of measuring her. Maybe Rosalie's scales of justice are off, but she does do Esmé her own brand of justice.

Do we?


	5. Intermezzo: Medicine: Father

**Chapter summary:** Bella would drink more than a little taste of what she thinks is the distillation of Rosalie's voice to ease her coughing fit. But what was it, really? Rosalie recalls her own human experience and the bittersweet taste of the medicine on her tongue and in her heart.

* * *

I had learned to play the piano under the tutelage of one of the world's greatest pianists.

I'm speaking of Edward, of course. In his mind, he is the one of world's greatest whatevers ... sometimes he's not that wrong.

Usually the Cullen family pretty much kept to their own units, which was surprising given Esme's efforts to treat what wasn't a family as a family. On top of which all of us came from sad family situations. With the notable exception of Edward's, which was odd, because he was the most disconnected of us all.

But Edward, after his bad-boy departure, was a dutiful son. He was devoted to Carlisle, which was the strangest thing in the world for me: Carlisle did to Edward what Carlisle did to me. But, being devoted to Carlisle seemed a light burden. Carlisle never made any demands ... as long as we stayed under his thumb: one big _happy_ family. Well, one big _vampire_ family ... but Esme seemed happy enough, I suppose ...

Edward was also very respectful of Esme, and that's why he gave us this recital. Esme asked for Edward to play for us, and, since Esme asked, Edward played. It was easy enough for Edward to please Esme, as long as he swallowed his pique and his pride.

Okay, not so easy for Edward, but to give the boy credit, he did do it for her. On some of the pieces, _Mom_ and _Pop_ Cullen even managed to convince me to stand next to Edward and sing for them. They did so love _their family._ Even just the illusion of it was so intoxicating for them.

As he was playing some of his own works, some classics, and some modern pieces, my mind drifted along with the music. He stopped his recital mid-chord and turned to me.

"All right," he had said, "would you like to learn to play now?"

That Edward was never one to come right to the point, was he?

Of course, the recital ended right then and there. If there was one thing that Esme loved more than listening to her _Edward_ play, it was this: _Ooh! the kids are having such fun doing things together!_ Although she had to abandon her high hopes after Edward made his feelings for me (or lack thereof) very plain, she couldn't get enough of happy family bonding time.

And that was the start of the acquisition of my own little musical talent.

See, the one time I had ever defied my parents was when it came to piano lessons. Well, _'defied'_ wasn't exactly the correct word. A lady knew how to sing and to play, but I had made it clear that learning to play the piano would not be a fruitful endeavor for the Hale daughter:

When I was seven, I practiced after supper every single day, for at least an hour ... making sure I missed every third note by a half-tone ... and the tempo was a bit off, a bit slow or a bit fast, and not at all even throughout the song. It takes a great deal of effort not to show improvement, but the effort payed off: my parents canceled my lessons after my third tutor and after only a half-year of that torture.

Torture. Well, let's not think about that term. But you know by now, _'torture'_ can have different meanings for different people.

I could sing, however. Mezzo-soprano. Not the favored voice for much of the repertoire, but there were some excellent German _lieder_ that fit the bill. I was always interested in singing Mahler.

Of course, I could not possibly sing the _Kindertotenlieder_, not with Esme's history: she never did have any luck with babies; that's why she worked so hard a being a mother to us ... we couldn't die on her, so it wouldn't kill her — again — to give her love to us.

But his other works, especially the_ Rückert-Lieder,_ were always a delight. And, then, Schubert ... ah! Schubert. Of course, _An de Musik_ is everyone's favorite, but ... Hm. I looked at the girl. _She _is of German stock. Perhaps she's appreciate the _Winterreise?_ Her situation and the song cycle fit so perfectly that it seemed Schubert wrote it for her. Perhaps I could pick up a small clavichord and sing and play it to her.

I could acquire the clavichord, and I could play it, because, now, thanks to Edward's surprisingly patient lessons, I _can_ play the keyboard. Actually, I was a much better learner than I had anticipated. Remembering the notes wasn't a problem, and the physicality of playing, hitting the right note at the right time, couldn't be easier. Everything physical was simplicity itself now: my eyes followed the notes on the staves, and my fingers played the notes on the keys. By the second week of my lessons, Edward and I hosted our own duet for Carlisle and Esme: a transcription of Beethoven's fifth symphony for four hands. One cannot truly appreciate that piece until one plays it: the sneaky off-sixteenth note introduction, the sudden changes in time, the surprising fugue ... a fugue? in the fifth symphony? from Beethoven?

Only he could pull it off with such carefree élan.

Before we left Rochester, Edward took me to a performance of it by the University orchestra — Esme: _"Have fun, kids ... don't stay out too late!"_ — we hid in the rafters to listen to the performance. It was a nice gesture — it was an _Edward_ gesture — and I was excited to go — _to get out!_ — but it was a mistake in retrospect. I almost caused a scene right at the introduction. The performers were so bad the conductor simply ignored the direction and had them come in on-beat, not at sixteenth note thereafter.

I hissed at Edward: _"They are doing it all wrong!"_

He shushed me right away: _"Shhh! Listen to the music!"_

_"Sorry."_ I whispered.

You don't interrupt Edward's music appreciation. We smiled our mutual understanding.

But then, the fifth violinist, a rather portly man, had a tendency to sweat, and I followed the rivulet more than the music, letting the smells excite my imagination, thinking of how he would _taste ..._

_"Listen to the music," _Edward hissed at me, but then he finished with the fatal mistake: _"Rose...alie!"_ His eyes widened with shock when he read from my mind what was happening to me the last time I was called 'Rose'.

_"Sorry!"_ He whispered very apologetically.

_"Shhh! Listen to the music, Edward!"_ I smiled at him, forgiving him his slip. His return smile was relieved.

After the performance, I judged the concerts Edward gave at home were much better than what the humans could muster. And he didn't always play mopey pieces, either. He had just finished a study of ragtime, and threw himself whole-heartedly into the new jazz craze.

But the reason Edward had interrupted his own recital for me, and the reason I had taken him up on his offer, was because of my father.

I had always known that my father loved piano music and only after his death did I learn that _he_ was the motive behind my lessons. He had wanted to hear me play. But now he never would.

... but perhaps I could play for this girl? Perhaps that would make up in some small way for being the daughter that he had _had,_ instead being of the daughter that he had _wanted?_ To play for this girl, sleeping heavily under the influence of her near deaths, her exhaustion, and his "medicine"?

Again, this is all my fault. But how was I to know humans, or whatever _she_ is, needed to build tolerance to alcohol? I should have, knowing how _everything_ so strongly affects her. I should have, but I didn't. So this whole very entertaining night played out the way it did thanks to my error in judgment, and thanks to her magical ability to make any and every situation a comedy of errors.

On the plus side, the medicinal effects of Drambuie actually make the one of the good human memories I have.

.....

I was eleven, and I was sick with the cough. I was _never_ sick, just as I was never allowed to cry — like this little thing seems to do almost non-stop — it was considered _unladylike _to be sick. But I was sick. So sick in fact that I was laid up in bed, and the servants began to whisper when they thought I wouldn't see them.

... Yes. This, if you will recall, is a _good_ memory.

And a thing happened that was simply extraordinary. Father was at the door to my chamber and addressed me.

Father had never addressed me. Father walked by me all the time as if I didn't exist, as if he didn't hear the greeting I was, of course, expected to give.

He said: "What ails you, Rosalie?" _He knew my name!_ "I have not seen you at the table for sup these past two days."

"It is nothing, Father," I managed to gasp out around a weak cough and around my great surprise.

He frowned and opened his pocket watch, and I heard three bells. 7:30 pm.

"My dear!" he called, and Mother was by his side in an instant. I had never heard him address her by name. I wondered if he knew it was _Gwendolyn. _Then I felt the blood drain in shock from my face. The temerity! Even _to whisper_ Mother's given name in my thoughts! "It is three bells," he stated.

"Yes, Walter," she responded dutifully, "your pipe is ready in the smoking lounge."

"Have my drink brought here, please," he commanded dispassionately.

Mother did not respond for one second, but she buried her surprise well, as if he always said such things and had not announced the end of the world. I studied her expression and control as best I could. If I were to survive this illness, I would need to be able to respond to such emergencies — the night cap brought outside the private retreat of the Lord and Master of the house — with equal aplomb.

She signaled to the servants, and there was a flurry of feverish activity from them. The butler would be reprimanded later, I was sure.

The valet brought the squat glass half-filled with an amber liquid to Father. He took the glass and then entered my room.

_He entered my room._

Etiquette required much more from me than I was capable of doing, so I did what I was able, averting my eyes as my feeble attempt to remove my covers to rise to greet him failed. Good thing I was properly made up. I'm sure he would have disowned me right then and there if he saw any improper reaction made visible on my cheeks. I coughed miserably, ashamed of not being Hale enough to rise above this trifling female sickness. I had failed Father, and I could see the reproach in Mother's eyes as she regarded me coldly.

He waited the seconds it took the servants to find him a suitable chair. So many surprises for them today that they handled in such an undignified manner. I wondered if they would all be replaced by the morrow. He then sat and put _his glass_ to my mouth.

"Take this very slowly, Rosalie, and it will ease the rawness of your throat."

I did, and it did. And I glowed. I glowed with pride that I had for Father. _He knew everything!_ And in the midst of my glowing, I slept.

I woke with a small amount of pain in my head, but no tickling agony in my throat. One more day in bed, with Father checking on me again that evening — same servants but the unusual "routine" executed with much more grace this time — and I was up the following morning. I did request to see the bottle of the elixir Father had given to me: Drambuie, the drink of princes. _Of course_ Father would have a drink for princes. A suitably royal drink for a suitably noble man. A Hale. Nothing base nor common should sully his lips.

Father was at the bank, of course. But my mind was on him. I made him lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ... well, more accurately, I had the servants make him lunch after making quite a mess with no presentable sandwich to show for it ... and I took the coach to the bank: Rochester Savings Bank, est. April 21, 1831, to deliver my gift. I waited outside, much too timid to approach the King in his Castle, as the servant returned, sandwich in hand, saying that he was told Father was in a meeting all day and not to be disturbed.

Father was a very important man conducting very important business for Rochester and for the United States of America — a very important city of the most important country in the whole world. I was very proud to be his daughter.

At 2 minutes before seven bells that evening — 5:28 pm — I lined up with my younger brothers, this time barely controlling the bursting inside me to see Father and to greet him "Good afternoon, Father" as I always did. One was not allowed to greet him "Good evening, Father" until eight bells — 6:00 pm. We were Hales, after all, and there was decorum to be maintained and protocols to follow.

At exactly seven bells, Father walked in the door, checking his pocket watch.

"My dear," he nodded to Mother and walked to the dinner table, exactly as always.

Ignoring my greeting, exactly as always.

We are Hales, after all. Precision and reliability are our watch words.

And "Love" and "affection" were silly little frivolities. I locked those words in my heart, crushing it and them as I moved to my place at the table.

.....

It doesn't help that my human memory did not contain the right amount of the liquid Father gave to me to drink, so I gave the same amount to her that I had recalled seeing in Father's glass. Even though he had weighted at least twice as much. Even though at the time he had been drinking at least eleven years more — probably more than that — than the girl in my arms.

So, yes, given the above, the burden of this situation's blame is entirely mine to shoulder.

* * *

**Chapter postlude**

One thing my death taught me. One thing that I had to thank for it. I learned my father did love me. That he really did love me. And I was grateful, even if I learned that small truth in the saddest of ways. They had fired my father soon after my death. I suppose it wasn't really a 'firing', _per se,_ because they gave him a gold watch and a _jolly-good fellow_ party before kicking him out the door, and he died six months after that. It wasn't because the loss of his job, as was the case for so many men: it was because of his broken heart. For me.

Just before his death, my father confronted Royce and some of his _buddies_ at a speak-easy Royce haunted. _"Good evening, Mr. King," _was all he could manage — he was a creature of society and in society ... he was a _Hale_ ... and propriety must always be maintained — but he looked him right in the eye. _"Good Evening, Mr. Hale," _Royce guffawed back, and three of his several _buddies_ roared with laughter. Three _buddies:_ Andrew King, John Parker, Smith Aldington. My father gave me these names with his willingness to stand up to that monster. He did stand up to him, because he loved me, and then, realizing what had really happened to me, he simply let his life slip away ... he had already been holding on for six months ... now, he simply let go and died in his bed of a cold and fever, a broken man meeting a broken end.

I couldn't be seen at his funeral. But I did kiss him goodbye. A week later, after the hubbub around _poor Walter Hale_ died down, I came to his graveside at night. As easily as you would dive into a pool filled with water, I dived into that Rochester soil and swam down to his coffin, to the box that contained the body that was my father. I broke through it and looked at his preserved corpse. That wasn't him. That was somebody else's body that looked like him. Something that was _him_ just wasn't there.

Then I realized it was him.

It was him. That is, it used to be him.

What wasn't there anymore was his soul. And I did something that I had seen Carlisle do. I prayed. Not to God, but to him. I prayed that he would drop his Hale pride, just this once.

I knew that my father would refuse Heaven on principle. _"If Rosalie be not here, then neither be I!"_ He would shout that right into God's face. I prayed to him, begging that he would just let me go, because I would never even get a chance at Heaven. I had already been judged and had received my eternal reward. I would never obtain Heaven, but Father deserved it. He _was_ a good father, if not an affectionate one. He _had _sacrificed his entire life for his family. Was that not noble? It was.

So I prayed, and I hoped he would listen to me, just this one time. And I kissed his cheek, so warm on my lips; his cheek the same temperature as the earth surrounding us. And I sang him the one song he loved, the one song I had learnt, only at his funeral, that he loved. The one song I had never sang for him. I sang him "Danny Boy".

"I'll miss you, Papa ... I love you." I kissed his cheek once more, then swam back to the surface.

Edward was there. I shouldn't have been surprised. It looked like he was about ready to give me The Lecture. But then he did look at me. Surely I was a sight, but he probably saw under the dirt and the bedraggled hair. He probably saw my own brokenness. _I had killed my own father._

He helped me cover the evidence of my last visit with my father with some turf we lifted from several miles away. I kept waiting for him to bring up my latest infraction with Carlisle or Esme, but he never did.

Sometimes, Edward could be the big brother I never had.

* * *

**A/N 1:** It's not Father's Day today, but do _yourself_ a favor. Go to your father, and find something that _he_ wants to do, and then do it with him.

Sure, sure. You're busy; he's busy. He'll always be busy. He'll never have time for you. Never, right?

But he likes to play or to watch baseball, right? A minor league stadium is not too far from your house: tickets and hot dogs are a buck a piece, and parking is easy and free.

But he likes to play cards, right? Play a game of Texas Hold 'em, or whatever — Bridge! Bridge is fun if you can scrounge up two more players — with him.

But he likes to work on the cars, right? Stand by the car and hand him a wrench when he asks for it ... maybe even help him replace the brake pads. Yes, it's agony for you, I know. Really. I do.

He likes to go to the shooting range, right? Give him a good heart attack: go with him, have him show you how to fire the weapon, _actually fire it_, and then clean then oil the rifles afterward.

Or do the crosswords? Or read? Or go bowling? Or maybe even take you ice skating? Or watch you paint or draw? Or help you with your homework, even though it annoys the Hell out of you? Or even watch the damn tube? Bella watched ESPN with her dad, and that was probably the happiest hour of his life, because she spent time with him.

You're Bella, right? Do what she did: spend some time with your dad. You'll hate doing while you're doing it, just like she did. But do it. Just this once. Or maybe more than just this once. You'll be making a memory that he will hold onto as long as he lives, a memory that you will hold onto much longer than he lives. And you'll both be grateful for it.

* * *

**A/N 2: **The scene between Rosalie's Father and the 'gentlemen' at the speak-easy was lifted directly from the fanfiction story "Rosalie's Revenge" by "Consultant by Day". _My_ story is AU (alternate universe); _hers_ is canonical Rosalie and also one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read. Please read "Rosalie's Revenge"; you'll be doing yourself a favor.


	6. Her Name: Mother — I: My Own Little Girl

**Section summary:** Eternity. One would think one has plenty of time to think deep thoughts. One would think rightly. But when those thoughts are thought, what is to be done about them? What if nothing _can_ be done about them? Eternity renders time moot, but it doesn't grant patience. Just the opposite, in fact, for me.

* * *

I am a vampire. I am eternal. That means I'm supposed to be patient. Isn't that correct? Yes. I can outwait you. I can outlast you.

But I have never needed to do that: I can simply overpower you. And I simply do.

But now. Now, I'm confronted with something that I cannot force. In fact, I am the one who must submit. I am the one who must wait. If I weren't already dead, the anticipation would be killing me.

For what am I being forced to wait? The girl's name.

_What is her name?_

So trivial a thing, isn't it? Something that is thought of once, if it is thought of at all, and thought of before the character of the named one is even ascertained.

But it's not trivial. It, the Name, points to the ineffable essence of the Named. The name is the most important possession, the shape of the heart, the _vitalis,_ the doorway to the soul. It is not trivial. It is not to be taken lightly, for it will shape everything about this girl. It will shape everything that transpires between us. Everything.

But so many people are named so carelessly, aren't they? The perfect example of that indifference is the eponymous girl sleeping in my arms.

Did her parents put any thought _whatsoever_ into her name? _Isabella_, the great Catholic queen of Spain (and, actually, the name's spelling is _Isabel,_ but we Americans pride ourselves in our independence from everything, including history. We are not rooted in any past, and respect none of its weight. An example of that: this girl's family name: _Swan_, not the original _Schwan ... _but that trespass might be forgiven: it was illegal for the German immigrants here to speak their native language or to school themselves during the Great War. A desire to integrate, and disappear from censure, can be very strong). Is this girl a great Catholic Spanish queen?

Hm. I wonder what her religious beliefs actually are? It _would_ be just my luck for her to be Catholic, now, wouldn't it? The religion that embodies the episcopate so much more strongly than what my diaconate ancestors, the Pilgrims, fled to the New World for, escaping the Church of England. Escaping to the freedom that the New World offered. Imagine it: a Catholic girl falling for a Presbyterian vampire. So episcopate — no: _magisterial! UGH!_ — verses diaconate, so tradition verses scripture, so black verses white, so up verses down. So impossible. It could never happen.

Impossible? ... or exceedingly improbable? _Never say never._

I hate this eternity. I really do.

Not that what her religion is matters to me. _She _doesn't matter to me — _not at all, right?_ I remind myself — so her _religious_ beliefs are of no concern to me either.

So, no: she's not a great Catholic Spanish queen. Obviously. But then the most clear derivative of that formal name — a formal name that she vehemently rejects — presents itself: _Bella._ Obviously, the Latin does not apply: _bella premunt hostilia?_ Please. This girl? The personification of _War?_

Well, actually, I have seen her temper flare, but to call that warlike would be to call the mewing of a kitten a lion's roar: just too amusing to consider seriously.

... And, well, yes: she is surrounded on all sides by hostile forces.

Me.

But as my arms encircle hers, hers cling to me. She isn't so much _surrounded_ _by_ hostile forces as much as she purposefully _surrounds_ _herself_ _with_ them, seeking them out, begging them — _begging me_ — to stay with her, to comfort her.

It's as if her infatuation were much stron...

No. She is simply deluding herself. That is all.

She thinks she loves me, but she doesn't. Not really; it's just an infatuation of hers. And I don't love her. So, all is well.

My mind whispers a phrase so quietly that only a vampire could hear it: _... at present, _and it smiles.

_GOD DAMN IT all to HELL!_

_FINE! ... FINE: _I don't love her _yet.__ YES, I __KNOW__ THIS! _Thank you _so much_ for the unnecessary reminder.

Now, where was I?

So, not really the Latin _bella,_ but the Italian one? _Bella:_ beauty. Does _she_ see _herself_ as beautiful?

That she _is_ beautiful is not the question. Obviously she is. In fact, after I looked beyond my initial prejudice, I now see her physical beauty far outshines mine. I do have the critical eye to judge this correctly. And the dispassionate detachment to state it objectively. She just needs a bit of cleaning up — well, much more than _a bit_ of cleaning up — and some strengthening of her childlike self-confidence. Which I can provide. Which I _will_ provide. She _must _grow to see herself clearly. She simply must. And when she has that poise that her clear seeing will provide, then ... well: if we went back to Rochester, all eyes would be on her, not me. Rochester? She would be admired anywhere and everywhere: London, New York City, Paris, Rome, ... Amsterdam. When I first saw her, even though at the time I had mistaken my jealousy for disdain, I did have every right to be jealous. Every right.

She would be admired ... even in Volterra — the city of vampires — but I couldn't imagine a visit at _Volterra_ as a pleasant experience. I don't think the admiration of her beauty would be at all a topic of the conversations there.

But even there, even where every creature is more beautiful than any mortal there, even as my beauty outshines theirs ... naturally, of course ... her beauty would blind all before her like a Sun brought present here to Earth, deigning to visit those vampire lords stuffed with their empty self-importance.

And if her physical, that is, her external, beauty is something, then her inner beauty ...

But the real question is not if she _is _beautiful, but does _she_ see herself as beautiful? And, currently, the real answer is that she does not see herself that way. Again, vehemently so. If she does not see herself in this light, if she fights with everything she has — in her carriage, in her poise, in her dress, in her comportment, in her speech — to reject this image, if she refuses to call herself truly _Bella _—_ Beauty_ — then there is no way that others, _that I,_ can call her that.

'Bella' is not this girl's name. What, then, is her name?

_She_ chafes against what she thinks to be the pejorative designation that I am currently forced to use. She thinks she has it hard. _She_ has it _hard?_ I've only had this little captive three days — most of the time of which has been occupied with my hunting needs and her spectacularly inventive ways of dying — and for all this brief eternity I've been forced to keep everything about her so open, so unsettled, that I cannot even find a way to address her. _Girl, start breathing again. Girl, put on clothes. Girl, do you need to go to the WC? Girl, I am not kind; I am a monster. Girl, you are the kind one, accept that. Girl, drink water. Girl, girl, girl._

_She_ hates that? _I HATE THAT!_ I just wish she would stop hiding her true nature, her true self, and tell me her name. And I wish she would do that _right now!_

Being in eternity does not give one patience. In fact, this anticipation is making the seconds slow to a crawl. That future — that _Now-to-be_ — when she does tell me, or when she does show me, what her name is? If it came in the very next second, it would not have arrived soon enough.

Will she tell me now? I look down at her, but her face is hidden by her hair as it is cast down ... as usual. I shift my weight and hers ever so slightly, ever so gently, and her head slowly tilts back and up. Her expression as she sleeps is entirely relaxed, at peace. And a void. Even in sleep, she gives nothing away. And she gives everything away. So freely. So trustingly. To all. Even to me: a monster.

_Biscuits._

Hilarious, given what I am — _biscuits, _and before that _cornbread ... for vampires!_ — but, also, so _à propos._ Bread: the representation of life itself, the ancient offering of the very self to the gods.

See, even in her smallest gestures there lies a depth of giving that no mortal could match or even comprehend. Even when she's being a silly little girl, she is beyond compare.

I had moved her so gently that she wouldn't notice this in her sleep. But somehow she does anyway. It's as if she is aware of the slight pulling away so that I could see her face. She shifts back, returning her face back to the blanket between us, as if trying to burrow her way back into my chest, and then sighs when she again feels me against her, her cheek resting against my body.

I hope she tells me her name _before_ she dies.

Maybe it will arrive to me with a bit of meditation and prompting on my part. She sleeps now, and I have time. Let's see.

Persephone?

It fits. She is Death's captive. I look down at her.

Hm. She doesn't _look like_ a Persephone. That's much too formal a name for this girl: she will not even accept the rather less exalted _Isabella, _I can just imagine her response every time I would say, _Persephone, dear, please go to sleep; you need your rest from all that dying today_. Or, _Persephone, make sure you drink your water._ Or, _Persephone, why are you crying? Don't cry; it's okay. That_ last phrase would be happening at nearly regular three minute intervals. Would she tolerate being called _Persephone_ every three minutes? I think not. And besides, Persephone received her release from Hades for six months of every year. This little one would receive no such release. Not from me, her Hades, her Death.

Not _Persephone, _then. Well, what about a name volunteered by her? She _did_ mention Io, didn't she? Io _did_ have a run-in with more than one immortal, didn't she? Particularly with an irate goddess. And Io was turned into a heifer. This girl, with her beautiful brown eyes and hair radiates a gentleness of spirit, a kindness and ease that matches the name perfectly. _Io._

You may think it insulting: _Did Rosalie just call the girl a cow?_ But then it may perhaps be that you have never touched a cow, looked at a cow, hugged a cow, then, have you?

Have I?

I actually don't know. I must have, though, mustn't I? It must have occurred when I was a human. It must have occurred when I was little. Did my parents take me to a farm, or to a patting zoo (an euphemism for "farm that charges a small fee to allow city children to do some farm work": "Here, kid, try milking this cow. 'It's Fun!'")? Were my parents ever kind to me that way before my twin brothers came along, and they moved on to the task of making every effort to advance our family in the world? Were they kind to me when I was very young, like a little girl of three or four?

I don't know.

_What if ..._ Oh, my goodness. I quickly removed my encircling arms from the girl, moving them so my hands hung over either side of the bed, and I turned my hands upward and away from anything that might be destroyed from my reaction to my next thought. I checked to make sure no limb of mine endangered the girl, and then I thought the next thought.

What if I had found _her_ at the age of three or four? What if she was out with her father in the woods when the wolves attacked? He would defend her. He would use his body to shield hers. What if I came across that tableau as the wolves were ripping out his throat and leaping toward that little girl?

I would do the same thing that I did for her just this week, wouldn't I? Oh, yes! I would. I would save that girl. But then, in my arms would be a little three-year-old, looking at me, so lovingly and so trustingly. I would have a little girl in my arms.

My own little girl.

I could not draw in calming breaths, but I could, _this time,_ allow my body to lock up. I _could_ strain every muscle. I could clench my hands into fists and tighten my arms and allow my body to shake with the pure power that thought rocked me with. I _could_ do all this — _this time_ — without harming or killing the girl. Unlike the last time — just this very night, in fact — when similar feelings rocked me, when all I could do is remain still and relaxed.

My own little girl. I trembled with the feelings that that thought enflamed.

The release of those feelings through my body helped quite a bit, actually. I recovered much more quickly this time, and I could enclose the girl in my arms again before the absence of her "protector" was noticed enough to wake her. I made sure she was still sleeping by listening to her brain activity. She was deep in Δ — _delta _— so I continued my fantasy.

_If_ I had found this girl at the age of three, would I love her?

Yes. I would love her unconditionally.

In fact, I would experience a love that no vampire before had _ever_ experienced. I would experience a love that no vampire _could_ ever experience. I would experience the love of a mother for her own child.

And I would be changed. Gladly. And I would love her. Not as my own mother had loved me, because, frankly, she didn't. No: I would love her as if she were my very own daughter. She _would_ be my very own daughter.

_Just imagine it! _Instead of having to deal with this girl now, so lacking in self-confidence and poise, so unaware of her own merit and beauty, I could work on her from the very beginning, building her confidence, helping her to face every adversity, making her strong to rise to every occasion. She would no longer be this weak, yielding, weeping thing, for I would turn her into ...

I looked down at her, and realized, in horror, exactly what I would turn her into.

... I would turn her into a Hale. Worse: I would turn her into me.

She wouldn't be her at all anymore. Not after I finished with her: she would be cold.

She would be beautiful, yes, but she would be cruel and heartless. For I would squeeze every single drop of her kind and gentle nature from her body and her spirit as I molded her into my own image: _Are you indulging in these weaknesses again?_ I would scream at her, _Remember, you are a Hale: act as one! _Yes, she would be a Hale. Just like her mother. Me: her relentless vampire mother, a Hale. Just as I am just like my own mother. I _am_ my mother. A Hale.

I could blindly argue the argument that every child advances as they become parents: _oh, no! I'm not going to raise my children like my parents did. I'm going to raise them __right__! _But what really happens? The child-parent acts out the only play they know. Every word, every gesture, comes from what their own parents did to them. My little baby girl would be raised by a heartless vampire mother whose nurturing skills were informed by a human mother who is colder than most vampires can be.

My mother.

* * *

**A/N:** The Latin phrase _'bella premunt hostilia'_ comes from the _Verbum Supernum Prodiens_ written by St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Faith. It means something like [my translation]: 'the forces of war surround (me)'. As an aside, it's always helpful to have something like _An Elementary Latin Dictionary_ by Charlton Thomas Lewis and Hugh Macmaster Kingery lying about when dealing with vampires. It seems like vampires like to quote and to think in Latin, and stuff.

**A/N:** This chapter does not pretend to represent itself for Presbyterian vampires or for what Presbyterian vampires think of lapsed Catholic girls pining for them. Or for the success of any alleged relationships that may or may not occur between Presbyterian vampires and lapsed Catholic girls should such a relationship occur or not occur between the said parties regardless of gender, religion, or region of upbringing. Again, _caveat lector_, or, colloquially: _YMMV_.


	7. Her Name: Mother — II: Birds and Bees

**Chapter summary:** All children grow to become their parents. You think my father was harsh? It's not polite for the undead to speak ill of the living, so I'll only say that I wish, wish, wish I turned out like him, instead of ... Well, if wishes were horses ...

**WARNING!** Content contains repeated use of profanity, expressions of homophobia, and descriptions of sexual machinations. If any of this offends you, please avoid this chapter. If you think the early 1930s did not contain situations or attitudes so described, PM me and we can discuss the topic further offline, that is, if you are willing to engage in a reasoned and researched discussion. Let me just say that the prevailing view now is quite different in its tolerance than what it was then. _Caveat lector._

* * *

It was two weeks before the _big day, _my wedding day, when I heard my mother's commanding tone.

_"Rosalie,"_ she called.

I could tell how angry my mother was with me in her call. _'Rosalie'_ meant she needed to deal with her annoying daughter. _'Rosalie Hale'_ meant that there was a serious issue to be dealt with ... with serious consequences. When she called _'Rosalie Lillian Hale', _though ... I had her call me twice in my life by my full name. And that was twice more than I had ever wanted to hear, for one of those times was when she caught me crying when I was ten.

I never cried again in my life.

And, now, I cannot cry. Funny, isn't it, how Fate enjoys its ironic power over me?

I had never, _ever, _heard her call me _Rose._ She didn't love me, you see, and she saw no need for pretense.

So she had called me, and I left my room immediately and went downstairs to see what trouble I had caused. I couldn't recall any transgressions. _Two weeks, _I though as I descended the stairs_._

"Yes, Mother?" I asked, standing in front of her. I had learnt quickly and at a very young age that a Hale child does not shout across the house, like children of those lower classes. When called, one went.

"Ah, yes, Rosalie, there you are," and her face turned up into an expression that I had never seen directed toward me before. She "smiled".

I became very, very cautious as I waited for her attack.

"The wedding preparations are all but complete, so we now need to discuss the importance of the marriage, starting with the honeymoon. Shall we retire to your room to discuss this in a more private setting?"

I had been told that this kind of talk was called 'The Birds and the Bees', and relaxed my guard slightly.

I should have known by now that I should never relax my guard around Mother.

So, having just come from my room, I followed Mother back up the stairs to my room. Exercise. Exercise is always very good for one's health.

You may wonder why Mother simply didn't come to my room to talk, if that was our destination anyway. Obviously, you are not a Hale. A Hale doesn't go looking around for things needlessly: things come to a Hale. Even if 'things' is a daughter. After all, I may not have been in my room, right? Because I could have been ... I don't know ... I could have been in Ottawa, or some such place.

She took up a commanding presence in the center of my room after a cursory sweep to find anything out of place. She looked disappointed that my room was impeccably ordered. So she swept her hand over my desk and tsked with disapproval at the imaginary dust she collected on her fingers. I didn't sit down, of course, but I didn't offer her a seat, either. If she would have wished to sit, she would have already, and any move on my part in that direction would only make Mother's temper worse ... than what it always was.

With Mother, saying less was always the better course.

"Now," she said, demanding my full attention, "what is the purpose of this alliance to the Kings?"

Mother usually did not ask open-ended questions, but it wasn't hard for me to guess the correct answer to this one. The 'correct answer' being 'the answer she expected'.

"To advance ourselves, Mother," I responded dutifully. My views on the matter were best kept buried very deeply until after I had made my escape into Royce's big, strong arms. No sense in ruining my happily-ever-after now so soon to that magical day.

Mother seemed not to like my offered answer, however: "Yes, of course, to advance ourselves, but that's merely accidental! Now give your answer some thought for a change! What do we gain here?"

Now I was confused. Up to this point, whenever she talked with someone, she had always supplied the answer to her questions in her question. She gave me no such hint now. I did turn my mind to what she asked, but I couldn't see how she would wish me to respond, so I took the safest course and remained silent.

"What do they teach children in school these days?" Mother shook her head. "Looking at you, I weep for the future."

As if she had ever shed a tear in her life. Maybe she did. When she had me, her ultimate disappointment.

_Two weeks. Just two weeks._

"Look around you, girl! What do you see? The mighty engine of progress has come to a screeching halt, and those socialists and unionists are making sure it will never restart, and not just here in America but throughout the whole civilized world. What would be the outcome if your father were to lose his position at the bank?" Mother was on one of her rampages again: she had made it her personal cause to stamp out all hints of the scourge of Marxism she observed rising alarmingly throughout the world. Whenever Father discussed business at home — how profits were negatively affected in a business the bank invested in because of a strike by the workers — I could see the fires burning within her being fanned and fueled.

"Mother," I attempted a placating tone, "Father is president at the bank. He is the most important person there. Such a thing would never occur."

"Open your eyes!" she snarled — I guess I didn't placate very well — "that's what every one of those hobos thought before they got the ax. Your father is only important to the Kings for as long as they think him so. But I've seen it happen, and you've seen it happen. And it can very easily happen to your father. One day he'll be at ease in his chair in his office, and the next day they'll throw him out onto the street! And then what happens? Our house, our living, everything: Poof! Gone!"

In retrospect, Mother was right, and I was wrong ... and it was, after all, all my fault. I was just too beautiful not to be noticed when Mother had me bring lunch to Father on the very day Royce II was touring the properties and businesses owned by the King family.

_Ah, look at me: the beautiful, cold, hard and dead girl_. But this little vibrant girl in my arms was so soft and warm, filled with that heavenly blood ... and with that so desirable life. O! to be human again and ...

Well, no sense in crying over spilt blood.

_Tee-hee_. I can't cry, anyway, so that makes that resolution a rather facile one to follow, especially since there was no visible spillage of blood, and, soon, hopefully, her menses would cease its flow as well when she moved back into Phase I.

_What's done is done,_ and all that.

And I didn't spill any of Royce's blood, either, during that special time we shared as not-husband and not-wife. No sense having blood pouring out of him, causing me to go into a frenzy and ruining my fun in the first hour when there was nearly eight more glorious hours of pure delight for one of the parties, ... and pure pain for the other.

"But the Kings," I recollected myself to that past as Mother continued her diatribe, "they don't have jobs to lose, they have jobs to dole out! They are indeed a true aristocrasy. You are advancing us with this very exalted match, but the vital thing you do for our family is to secure us. But do the wedding vows help in any way here?"

"Ummm," I offered.

I shouldn't have hesitated, and I should have listened for the answer in her question.

"So unattractive," she tsked, "so very unattractive! Know what to say before you say it, and until then say nothing. No, the wedding vows do not help, not in any way at all. Do you think your Royce will continue to shower affection on you after the honeymoon? Do you think he will dote on you ten years from now as he dotes on you now?"

Of course he would! Of course he would! Royce was the perfect gentleman, and so romantic, too. This very room was filled with the roses and violets to prove it.

"You see these flowers?" Mother waved at the evidence dismissively, "How many husbands have you ever seen give their wives flowers? How many husbands have you ever seen shower affection on their wives? You've been out in society for two years now, can you name any?"

Well, Vera's husband was always kissing her when he thought I didn't notice. And I had seen him bring home flowers on more than one occasion. And the look on my friend's face when he did ... O! Every husband should bring his wife home flowers at least once a month, just to watch her drop and break the china like Vera did. She cried almost as much as this little thing did when I helped her with her feminine needs in the outhouse that first time.

So, flowers and sanitary napkins: two sure ways to bring tears to your girl's eyes.

Not that _this girl_ in my arms is _my girl,_ or anything like that.

... yet.

Right, right, right. Let's get back to Mother's diatribe, shall we? That's a course that's already been charted and sailed.

So I remained silent, not answering Mother's question. Mentioning a _carpenter's family_ would not help the conversation any, I surmised.

"You can't name any because they aren't any. This may be hard for you to hear now, Rosalie, but listen well: Royce will lose all interest in you soon after the honeymoon, if not sooner. And you know why?" she asked. I guessed this was a rhetorical question.

I was right.

"It's because Royce is a man, that's why, and he follows his nature, as all men do. Men hunt. But once they capture their prize, they abandon it for the next prize, and the next. Men are unfaithful, but it's not their fault: it is simply their nature. So you think you are capturing your man with the wedding vows? No. You are in fact driving him away with those very vows you seek to bind him with, because once he has you, he's on to the next filly that he seeks to rein in. So, how do you bind him then?"

She waited all of two seconds.

"Think, Rosalie!" Mother was just a well of patience today. "You use his very nature, don't you see? The hunter needs to protect his own, so you need to provide him something to protect, right away. If you do that, he will stay; if not, he will stray. You must provide him a male heir, and you must do this with no delay. But here's the thing, Rosalie, and this requires experience so I can forgive you for not knowing it ..."

_Mother? Forgiving?_ I worked hard to maintain my blank composure.

"... but will your husband help you in any way to conceive a child knowingly?" She smiled triumphantly, sure in her superiority.

Royce and I hadn't spoken of children yet, but I didn't see there being a need. Obviously we were getting married and obviously we were going to have a happy family with beautiful children. I could see them in my mind's eye: blond-haired boys, at least two of them, and at least one little girl who looked like me, but with the cuteness that youth gave. All with perfect complexions and steel-blue eyes. All so beautiful: my children. My beautiful children in my beautiful family in my beautiful home.

That is simply what was done. There was no more need to discuss this than to discuss taking one's next breath.

"Mother, Royce seems very ..." I tried to help her see that there wouldn't be a problem here, that I and Royce both were 'willing coconspirators' in her 'grand scheme'.

She cut me off with an authoritative wave.

"Of course he seems 'very'," she twisted my word with her mocking tone. "But you will come to find that he is 'very' only when you are in two states and neither of those is when you are fertile. He will attack you in lust only when you are sick and only when you have your period. Do you know why?"

I blinked at Mother in shock. I could not believe she was saying something so outrageous.

"Hm. Rosalie, you will be getting married in two weeks, so I do not have the time to mince words with you. I will be speaking to you plainly so that my meaning is clear. These are far too important matters to treat with innuendo."

Mother had always been very frank. Did this mean she thought she was being subtle before? What would _speaking plainly _mean to her? I prepared myself: I would soon be finding out.

"He will press himself upon you during those times, that is, if you are lucky _after_ the honeymoon, because he _knows_ you will not conceive. That is the safest time for him to have his way with you, because conception means a child, and a child means responsibility, and responsibility means the possibility for failure. A man has no stomach at all for failure, because a man only wishes to do what he has done before and nothing else. You know what responsibility means to a man? That he must do less of what he will like and more of what he won't. No man will venture down that path, no matter what verbal protestations he argues. Do you know what a man thinks? A man thinks not what he says — even though he is proud to boast his mental faculties — a man thinks what he does. _'Yes, dear, I want a son!'_ he cries, as he refuses to fuck you during your fertile period, _particularly_ when you tell him you are fertile. So how do you get him to give you this security?"

I was stunned. Had I just heard what she said so nonchalantly? Had she just said _'to fuck you'?_

"Obviously, you take any and every opportunity you can during the honeymoon to have relations with him. Don't go sightseeing: _fuck him_."

Yes, she had just said that.

"Get him just drunk enough for him to lose his natural caution but not too drunk so that he loses his potency. Then, maximize the intended use of the honeymoon."

Mother was being more _intimate _with me, as it were, than she had ever been before. I now missed the distance that our formality had kept between us. This 'birds and bees' talk was going quite differently than any way I had thought it would have gone.

"If you are fortunate, you will conceive, and if you are very fortunate, it will be a son. Then your task becomes so much easier, because you can point to the first as an experience to gain the rest. It will still be hard, because the male sex cannot count beyond one before becoming tired, as you will find out in your private chambers, but it will not be monumentally hard."

I counted the years. Mother and Father had been married nineteen years. I was the _'honeymoon fuck'_ she was now so coldly describing. No wonder she hated me so, I had failed to be that necessary first son, and even though Father stayed with her, and didn't go hunting the next filly, as she put it, it seemed she had never forgiven me the transgression of my sex.

"But if you do not conceive during the honeymoon, ... oh, Rosalie! Well, then you have your work cut out for you, and you must apply your every effort to this single end. It will be a difficult undertaking, but not an impossible one. The first steps will be to use what you have learnt of his likes from the honeymoon. During your fertile time, get him slightly drunk, or fake an illnesses, as before. But these only work for a little while. In a few months time, you will be no more interesting to him than the morning newspaper. Less so, even. This is when you need to take matters into your own hands. You will find your man will sleep at the drop of a hat, and then, when asleep, not even the Final Trump will wake him. This is a good thing. While he sleeps, take him, that is take his manhood, in hand. Two strokes should be enough to prepare him. Mount him then, and you should soon enough have what you need."

I had now heard so much that I lost my ability to judge what I was hearing. Had Mother just told me to ...

"If only all conjugations were that easy: no fuss and no clumsy groping from his part! But that is the easy part. The hard part is the pain from the follow-on subterfuge. For, nine months later, there is a baby, and he thinks it's not his, casting you out of house and home, unless you submit to the following. He _will_ be randy when the moon reaches its fullness, and he will be thinking you're experiencing your menstruation. Let him take you. He'll be rough, as he finally gets to conquer his prize during your frailty — men like nothing better than to attack the weak — but when the pregnancy develops he'll have no excuses, and you'll have given his family and ours the heir and the security we need."

"Now, as for the rest of the marriage, it will all become rather routine. During your period, make sure he's very drunk — unless he's a mean drunk, that is — but if you're unable to stop his advances, just turn around quickly before he can pin and mount you, then wiggle so that his manhood rests between your cheeks and give it a couple of strokes from your backside. He should be asleep before he even finishes, and you can extricate yourself and bathe to remove his disgusting leavings from your back. As long as he doesn't enter you anally, which will be easy for you to manage, seeing how men are so clumsy, this maneuver will saves you quite a bit of unnecessary pain. These moments will happen only in the first year or so of marriage, so I recommend you keep a towel on your side of the bed to clean yourself after such occasions."

A towel. I could just image the scenario with Royce as Mother described. I could just imagine it, but I wished I couldn't.

"But after the first year he will lose all interest in you and will start playing the field. Now, this is where your skills of the lady of the house come into play. I think there is nothing more disgusting than fucking the help: you shouldn't shit where you eat, and you shouldn't shit where you live."

I had never heard this kind of language from Mother before. She had always seemed so austere, prim and proper, but now her mouth flowed with such profanity that I didn't know if she had been possessed. But behind those frightfully offensive words, I still saw the cold, hard, steely woman I had always known to be Mother. It was if she had always been this way, this 'frank' person, and hidden behind a mask of propriety. That mask was clearly removed now.

"And when I say 'you' I mean Royce, mostly, but we will turn to you as well presently. Like I said, a disgusting pursuit, fucking the help, but the alternative: a string of affairs? Difficult and costly to manage and then to cover up. Also, mistresses tend to take over the house, bit by bit, until you are the stranger living in your own home; until you are the kept woman, and the current mistress rules from what was once your throne. But the help? Very easily managed, and it costs nothing to dismiss them. Think of the other advantages: a mistress can exert power from within by manipulating your husband, but she can very easily ruin your entire family through many channels, including the social network and even the presses. You do not wish to see your name in the _New York Times_ in that light. O! the horror! But the help? As soon as they _think_ of whispering a word to anyone, firstly, they would be ignored — what's their word against yours? — and secondly, you, if you managed them properly, have all the power over them anyway. Firing, with a scathing reference, is always an option, but a much better one is to keep them on ... what better way to make a servant's life a living Hell on Earth than for them to be forced to service your every cruel whim as you take out your wrath of your husband's infidelity on them? There are few pleasures more rare than that, let me tell you ... not that I would know from personal experience, mind you."

Mother's vindictive tone during the imagined torture seemed much too warm to make her caveat, thrown in at the end, have any weight whatsoever. I wondered which servant or servants had felt this wrath. I wondered who Father had been f...

"So, you must keep your husband's wandering eye within the confines of the house. And it is so simple to do. Have him present at the hiring of all staff. If he is unsubtle — and what man is subtle, really? — hire the ones he stares at the most, and then hire five more having the same looks, just so if one is off that day or unwell or having her period, he can choose from the others. However, if your husband is sly — and Royce does have that quickness in the way he looks out of the corner of his eyes — then you must observe him more carefully. You will know the ones he doesn't give a fig about: he'll look at them, or he won't, without a care in his head. But the ones he does covet? A flash of a look, then he will become very interested in something else ... but he won't be able to resist looking at least once more. That is the one, Rosalie, bring that one onto your staff, and you will have more domestic tranquility that you would with a man wandering about town with his various expensive and spiteful mistresses. Heed my words well. But then there's the opposite problem, and this seems to be the one your fiancé may have."

Royce having a problem, that is, a problem worse than what she had just described? Mother seemed to think it would be a foregone conclusion that the man I was going to marry would be hopping from bed to bed, and the best thing for me to do was to provide the beds in our own house. I could not imagine a worse problem than that.

"There is the very real issue that your Royce will prefer fucking other men to sleeping with you or other women."

I guess I should have tried to imagine harder.

"Mother!" I was finally shocked so much that I had found my voice. "I am absolutely certain ..."

"Of what? Has he tried to fuck you yet?"

"Mother! I cannot believe you are asking me such a question! Of course not! We are ..."

"Has he made _any _sexual advances at all? A kiss, perhaps?"

"No, Mother, but that doesn't mean that ..."

"And he enjoys the company of his friends? More so than with you? Even though he's getting married to you in two weeks time?"

"..." I had opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She was determined to see signs where there were none, but it seemed she wouldn't allow me to offer any defense of his innocence or character.

"Hm. Yes. Quite." Mother smiled cruelly. "But this arrangement actually does have its benefits if you manage it properly. The trick here is getting the heir, but that's actually not so hard, for now you have power over your husband, and you both can come to a very amicable arrangement. Hold him over the barrel, but then give him an out. Of course his parents will know nothing of his, _ahem, _preferences and will still desire a grandson. So, you speak plainly with him: require him to fuck you once a week, except during your period, for the rest of his life, and for the other six days he can visit his boyfriends. You will both walk away, together, happy in this arrangement, and men having his nature, I hear, can be good friends with their wives as the years progress. Just require him to keep his end of the bargain, because I know you well, Rosalie: you won't settle for blandness, will you? It will be you whom you will need to control. Make sure that once _you _start fucking the help, they look a good deal like your husband, that way the parentage of the child will not come under scrutiny."

This had gone too far. "Mother! I'm not going to ..."

"Of course, Rosalie, of course you won't start fucking the help. Or so you think. I could tell you to be satisfied with your own devices, but I know you. Oh, yes I do. Don't think you've hidden that tempestuous nature of yours from me. Once you have a warm body beside you, even if it's that husband who's eye wanders to his own valet, you won't settle for your pillow or your own hand, will you? You won't settle for fucking yourself for your own release. Besides, you are a Hale, aren't you: dominating every situation? But don't be Hedda Gabler. Fuck the help, not some other, outside, man: the help are very easily dominated and cannot threaten _you_ with scandal."

She wasn't finished. "But that's the easy part, getting the heir and other children from your limp-wristed husband. And, as a father ... or as a second mother, as it were, he can be quite helpful, attentive, ... loving, even. But he will not help making the boys into men that will, themselves, sire heirs. In this, you must take a leading rôle, but you must take this yoke very, very carefully. A boy dominated by his mother becomes his mother, and so your attempt to make a strong boy by showing too much strength will backfire, and you won't have a boy at all: you have a girl with a dick. Be very, very careful, Rosalie, and make sure that you have many sons so that at least one of them will be fruitful."

"But let's say that Royce really is a man that is, indeed, a man."

I was glad Mother had left the topic of Royce preferring men to me, but I feared what this change of topic would bring. I did not think it would turn to the perfect family life I had envisioned.

"Now that you've got him fucking the help ..." she started, and I knew I was right.

"... you've actually made your own life harder, because now you must convince him, in some way, to have relations with you even as he parades his dick around the house, and for you to remain satisfied enough that you don't start making mistakes yourself. You have got to make him fuck you weekly, Rosalie, not just when he senses your period coming along, and you have got to figure a way to do this. Remember the adage: you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Entice him in whichever way you can. You may think he's the most disagreeable man in the world, but you need his participation to sire an heir, because if he's not fucking you, and you have a servant boy fill you with his seed, it's going to be very hard to convince him that the child is his, no matter how carefully you choose your substitute."

"But if your Royce is a man, its better to stay away from the boys all together. You have a much better set of lovers that you can use to fulfill multiple ends. Listen to me carefully, Rosalie," she paused and looked me in the eye. _"Fuck his lovers, _Rosalie."

"What!" I shouted, and I was very glad my face was made up, because I could feel the heat burning in my cheeks.

"Yes, Rosalie, those maids that your Royce sticks his dick into: those are to be your lovers, and they will be the best sources for you in several ways. Let me count them." She raise her hand, ticking off the points on her fingers.

I _did not think_ Mother was going to start reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare.

"First, a maid may get uppity. Fuck her. Fuck her hard, and she will submit to you instead of flout her conquest in front of you. Second, she will be the best source of your husband's likes and dislikes, become her confidante and use this knowledge to get him into _your_ bed on occasion. Third, there's nothing like dominating your husband's lover, and a man is so very unoriginal. Each time he fucks her in one place, fuck her there, marking it as your own territory, and then fuck her in four more places that very same day. Make her beg. You know where your heights are, bring her almost to that peak, and leave her there until she submits entirely to you. Make her beg, make her beg a long time for it. Then, when you give her that release? She will do anything you want her to do to get back there again. But only give it to her when _you_ want to _AND_, and now listen carefully here, _each time after your Royce fucks her._ Make sure the last fuck she remembers is not from that two-pump chump but from you, her lover that satisfied her so completely she needed a day of bed-rest to recover. And on that day of her convalescence? Make her so completely yours she won't know up from down. Make her wash the sheets you slept with her on, even though she's exhausted, but then feed her soup as she recovers in her bed. Make her fear you and make her worship you. Make her cower at your every look but long for a single touch from you. So totally dominate her that there is nothing, especially not Royce, that she thinks of besides you. Then with her so trained, she'll even look forward to his dick, because she knows she's going to be your pussy cat soon after that. You'll have a perfect, obedient, submissive spy on your husband in her."

"And then the fun begins." Mother clapped her hands then rubbed them together briskly and gleefully.

_Fun?_

"He will eventually tire of her. That is the time always to be bringing her out in front of him, always to be humiliating him with little comments to the servant girl ... not about him, but, oh, about the weather, or the news of the day ... always to have his shame before him. In this way, you can rein _him_ in with what was _his_ conquest, and he will do _anything_ to avoid that displeasure ... even sleep with that awful wife of his. He may even grow affectionate then. Fuck him then, good and hard, and possibly in such a way as the girl knows it. Shame her as she had shamed you, with the same man. Revenge like this tastes o! so sweet! He'll move onto the next fuck sometime shortly. Move on with him, of course: this game never gets old. As for the girl he abandoned? You may dispose of her, or keep her, as you desire." She thought for a second and then added: "Probably best to dispose of her, you're going to be busy with the new girl, and you can't have cat fights under your roof."

I wondered how many girls Mother had disposed of throughout the years.

"Or don't dispose of her. Hm. Yes. That's better. It's always best to parade what were his trophies in front of him on occasion. A walk down memory lane, as it were, and good help is hard to find. She'll even work extra hard as she pines for you. Yes, it's probably best to keep her. You can get a quick treat now and then, too, as she knows what you like, as opposed to the new girl you are training. Yes, probably best to keep her on. Good help, and a good trained fuck, are hard to find these days."

I guess not many, then.

"So, Rosalie, do you understand what I have told you?"

I stared at her. She sighed.

"All that schooling. What a waste. I couldn't have said it plainer: fuck him, get an heir, and rule the house. Simplicity itself. Just remember, fuck him until the heir is secured. Fuck him, Rosalie, for, after all, marriage is all about that ... isn't it?"

She started to leave. But there was too much she said that I wondered if it came from _very_ personal experience. I had to ask: "Mother," she paused to look at me with a cocked eyebrow, "do you love Father at all?"

"Such impertinence, child! Remember your place! What makes you ask such a question? We have, after all, been married coming up on these twenty years now." And she swept out of the room.

I realized, as she left, that she didn't really answer my question. Perhaps her non-answer was her answer? Perhaps that was her intent?


	8. Her Name: Mother — III: Opposites

**Section Summary:** Vampires must be very, very careful in everything they do in this world, for, if not, we destroy what we touch. Even our very thoughts can destroy so, so easily. Even _my_ very thoughts. I _so_ liked that name, too. Ah, too bad!

**WARNING!** Contains an instance of profanity with an accompanying NSFW image.

* * *

I shook my head, trying to free it from the memory that would never, ever leave it. I wish I had carried some other human memory ... _any_ other human memory ... to the memory of my mother giving me her version of the "Birds and the Bees" talk. Imagine that person bringing her little three or four year old daughter to a farm to pat a cow?

It is almost impossible for me to imagine that scenario, given what I remember of my upbringing, but then how does a city girl have an unromantic but happy recollection of an animal she wouldn't have touched otherwise. If I were to touch a cow now there would be only one result.

I had liked birds, too. So, one Spring day, I hopped up into a tree where I saw a chickadee nest. A little chickadee with its eggs. I very carefully captured the bird in my hands; all I wanted to do was to pat it. That's all. I would have let it go right after that. As I held it, however, I heard its heart burst, and I found myself holding a still body of feathers, eyes bugging out, staring at out nothing.

I like birds, but only from a distance now. If I were to pat a skittish cow? Maybe the humans could find the corpse in time to harvest some meat.

But the girl as a heifer is not at all an insult, to my mind. Although unlike a cow she seems to crave my touch — without the accompanying heart failure — she is gentle; she is sweet; she is beautiful.

So, you cow-haters, ask me if your opinion will sway my view. Go ahead. Ask.

... Didn't think so.

But _Io, _as a name. Now, it certainly is distinctive, but perhaps too much so. I couldn't imagine saying the name _Io_ as hers to others out loud. _Hi, this is my ..._

Well, what is the girl to me? Let's just pretend we're in company, and I must introduce her. I'd need some kind of relation to her, other than that of being _my hostage._

Ah! I could introduce her as my sister! Perfect.

You may argue that we look nothing alike, and, to be sure, many families have children that look very similar to each other and to their parents. But, there are also many families with children that look nothing like each other. _Dear Edward_ and I had posed as brother and sister when we did need to venture out into the towns some distance from Rochester. Nobody gave that a second thought.

Yes, I would introduce her as my sister, using an Americanized version of the classic name: _This is my little sister, Jo._ They would say: ... _your sister?_ And I would respond: _Yes, well, she inherited all the good looks; she __is__ the pretty one in the family. _And wait for their reply.

I relished the thought of all the shredding I would get to do. There were many blind fools in the world — I had to admit: I had been one not so long ago — and some of those fools, perhaps most of them, would also be socially inept as well, and that is one thing I _never _was. The first wrong word out of their mouths to my declaration, and ... well ...

Yes, I would enjoy the shredding that would follow.

_My little Jo._ I really liked that. I turned my head into the girl and let the scent of her hair swirl about me, being _very careful_ not to inhale it. I rubbed my cheek against that silky brown hair, feeling its softness. Taking it into me.

_My little Jo._

I really, really liked that name.

But, then again, Io was buffeted by forces beyond her control, just like this little girl here who may or may not be _my little Jo._ But did Io offer anything of herself, other than that she was pretty to the eye and a _good fuck_ for Zeus?

_No. Stop it._

I simply must purge my mind from that way of thinking. Thinking the girl as Io and then using that vulgarity would only cheapen _her_ in my mind, so that soon, without any fault of hers, she would become just a _good fuck_. And I would go from thinking of her that way to treating her that way. This girl's nature was all of the good things I saw of it and _none_ of the bad things that other people saw in other people. I couldn't let the poisonous thoughts of other people drip out, like venom, and blacken the purity of this girl's spirit.

But I had already done it. I would now forever associate _Io_ with that terrible image that I had poisoned my own thoughts with. Whenever I thought of _my little Jo, _the tarnished _Io_ would come, unbidden, to mind.

I sighed in my heart. _My little Jo_ was now off the table.

I shook my head in disgust with myself. A perfectly good name ruined by a perfectly black creature — me. _She_ thinks of me as an angel; _she_ thinks of me as sparkling white light. But I am the exact opposite of her. I am her avenging angel of Death; I am her white Darkness.

Exactly her opposite. Because she is so very much a bright being, so in the light. Hm. In the light?

_Au clair de la lune_

A little French nursery song I had sung came to mind. It had fit my range of mezzo-sorprano perfectly so I had been called on to sing it to present me to larger audiences. It was one of the things Mother was proud to boast. _Our Rosalie sings the French and German so beautifully, wouldn't you agree?_ she would "ask". Mother never did ask questions seeking answers. She asked only questions that only had one right answer. Hers. Mother married into the Hale family, but she outdid us all. There was no Hale more Hale than Mother.

_Claire?_ Did that work? It did fit her pale skin, and the light indwelling her eyes. And the purity of her spirit.

But that quite wasn't it, was it? The girl I was hugging was as soft as ...

... well, she was as soft as herself. Not the squishiness of the jellyfish I had accused her of being weaker than, because now I saw that beneath her yielding surface there was a firm, unshakeable core of goodness that did not move. But her goodness was for noone to see, noone to guess at, because it was covered in an exterior so humble that masked her from everything. She was made to be looked away from, because for her, it was never about her: it was about you or something else.

So entirely my opposite.

_Claire_ with the guttural, uvular start was much too harsh, really, for this sweet little thing. And with its plosive beginning, drew far too much attention to the one addressed: she would wince every time I called to her.

Then, one-in-the-light, one-filled-with-light ... how about _Lucinda _or _Lucia?_ Of course, not the formal form, as she now refused _Isabella,_ but the familiar form? _Lucy._

That actually did work. It represented light, and it was light to say. And playful. Although this girl was always crying, as her current situation didn't promote frolicking about ... because when she did frolic about, as like in the snow yesterday, she had this rather irritating habit of releasing the hold on her life.

But even though the situation didn't merit joy, there was a sense of playfulness about her that refused to remain hidden. _Lucy._ Hm.

It also fit, because her old name, the one that did not work, _Bella,_ also has the velar constant sound that _Lucy_ has.

It also works because when I call her in my mind — _Lucy ... Looooooooo-ciiiiiiieee ... Lucy, come away from those mean growly wolves!_ — I can see her responding naturally to it. I can see me calling to her — _Lucy!_ — and her turning to me and smiling — _yes, Rose?_ I glowed at the thought, her calling me _Rose_ as I called to her in her own name.

_Nobody _calls me _Rose._ Nobody.

... but she had called me Rose early this night. In her sleep, yes, but she had called me _Rose._ And how did I feel when she called me thus:

_Rose, I love you._

Well, that's none of your business now, is it? But it was also a rather nice feeling, besides the other things I felt when she had said this.

_Rose, I love you._

Yes. Well.

_Lucy._ Does _Lucy _work?

I don't know ... I think so. It feels right, and I liked it, the image of me calling her thus; the image of her responding just so.

But _thinking so_ is not _knowing so._ And I am eternal. I could sit on her name for a day, or more — as long as was necessary, really — and see if my thoughts on her name coincided with her name. She also might have her own surprising revelation. She usually does have her own surprises with regard to any and every topic at hand. She may reveal something so amazingly different than _Lucy_ but so perfectly fitting that her revelation would of course be the obvious choice. She may even surprise me with her surprise in that she would reveal her name to be _Lucy._ In which case the surprise would be our accord. _That_ would be a first. As usual.

I was beginning to expect her surprises.

_Rose, I love you._


	9. Her Name: Mother — PS: the Help

**Section Summary:** Anything, _anything,_ touches a Hale or what is a Hale's, and I'll make sure that it, and all its friends, _know_ how terrible a mistake that was. I will make them know, and never forget, and never, _ever,_ trespass on a Hale again. _Ever._

**WARNING!** Contains Rosalie's unbridled cruelty that some readers have found disturbing. Contains repeated and emphatic use of profanity.

* * *

_Rochester, April, 1933 — Hale household__:_

I couldn't help it.

In the days that followed Mother's not-birds-and-bees talk, I kept looking at the servants that had, up to this point in my life, been invisible. Certainly they represented the Hale family well. They were attractive, but not excessively so.

They looked disinterested as always, but they didn't fool me. _They knew._

They had heard every word Mother had said to me. There are no secrets from the family's servants.

Which one was it? Which one was Father _fucking? _Not one of them gave me any indication. Not one of them betrayed a hint of anything under my constant scrutiny that day.

The next morning my maid was brushing my hair, as she always did. I looked at her through the looking glass. She had been my maid for over ten years. I had always thought of her as old, but she was less than ten years my senior. That put her in her mid-twenties. She wasn't beautiful, but she was pretty.

"What is your name?" I asked her. In all her years of service, I had never known her name. I didn't even know that she existed; I didn't even know of her presence ... until now. She had always been just one of the servants.

"My name is Carol, Miss Hale," she responded, continuing to brush my hair. She didn't return my look, concentrating on her work.

_It was her!_

"Are you ..." I started, but then I didn't finish my thought: _Are you fucking my father? _I just looked at her reflexion.

"Yes, miss?" she asked, all innocence. Too innocent.

No, she wasn't innocent. _She was fucking MY FATHER!_

Of course she was. She followed me wherever I went, tending to my every need, at table, in the drawing room, preparing me for my social outings. Always the good little servant. In short, she was always by me, ... or always in Father's view.

O! I was going to get her! I was going to get her but good! _Fuck my father, will you?_

As the day progressed, I watched everything. I watched her, and then, when Father returned home, I watched him. He didn't look at her at all. It was if he was embarrassed. _He knew I knew!_

I made my plan. At supper, I excused myself at the first course, complaining of lightheadedness. I got looks from my parents, but I still made my escape.

Not upstairs. Downstairs.

"Mrs. Wilson," I addressed the housekeeper. I had caught all the servants at their supper unawares, they all hastily arose, not looking at me.

"Miss Hale, do you require anything? Is something the matter with supper?" Mrs. Wilson was eternally calm. I wondered if she was the _old fuck._

"Supper is well enough, I suppose ..." I heard Cook's strangled cry from across the hall. She and her helpers had been putting away the cooking things when I arrived. They had to stop work at my presence, of course. She did not yet know it, but this was going to be the start of a very long night, indeed.

_I was going to get them all._

"... but I came down because I wasn't feeling particularly well. I was wondering if Carol ..." I looked at the girl in question. Her back was toward me, and I saw it stiffen. _Good. _"... would accompany me on a ride around the block in the carriage. Some fresh air and company will do me some good, I think."

"Yes, of course, Miss Hale, right away." Mrs. Wilson looked to Mr. Jones, the head butler. He nodded.

Servants started flying everywhere. Four went to prepare the carriage, two more left with Carol to prepare her for the cold, cold ride in the carriage. That left Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jones, hovering by me, waiting to release them to supervise the other servants.

"Is there anything else you require, Miss Hale?" Mrs. Wilson asked.

"Yes," I smiled, loving this destruction I had wrought; loving the destruction I was about to visit upon them. _Fuck my father, will you? I'll show you!_

"It's cold outside, so a thermos of Cook's chicken broth will keep me warm during the journey. If it's not too much trouble ..." It was. Tonight the soup was a cod chowder. Cook and her staff started scrambling, unpacking everything they had just washed, counted and packed.

"No trouble at all, Miss Hale," Mrs. Wilson answered calmly, but I heard rather loud grumbling from the kitchen. Cook wasn't particularly known for her discipline.

So I went over there, and stood right in front of her.

"What," I enunciated each word, "was that you said, Cook?"

Of course, her station didn't allow her to address me. She stared at me, wide-eyed. She had never been directly reprimanded before by one of the family.

So Mrs. Wilson rescued her: "Sorry, Miss Hale, Cook was just making sure your broth would be prepared correctly."

Preparing chicken broth. Hard, wasn't it, for someone who had been making soups for more than nineteen years for our family alone? I let it pass.

Almost.

"Yes, well, about that," I gave Cook one more hard glare before I returned my attention to Mrs. Wilson, "last time I got a thermos of soup some _fool_ didn't put the cap on tightly enough, and the stuff was so tepid that it was undrinkable. I'd _hate_ to have food prepared for a Hale so poorly represented. Cap on tightly this time, Mrs. Wilson, could you pass that on so we don't have another mess like before?"

I had started by addressed Mrs. Wilson, but then I turned and said most of it staring at Cook, daring her even to twitch. Cook stood frozen and then quickly dropped her eyes. I had cowed a woman easily thirty years my senior. _Good._

"Oh, one more thing." Cook really shouldn't have grumbled like she had, if she knew her place. I guess she didn't. I guess I'd have to help her learn it. "I'm sure I'll be hungry after my ride. Supper tonight was all well and good, I suppose, but I'd like a light meal sent to my room after my return. Something good. An omelet, perhaps? You know my preferences, right, Cook: crab, shallots, garlic — not too salty this time, please — and hollandaise sauce, yes? And freshly squeezed orange juice. And some chocolate served hot? What was dessert tonight? Banana pudding? Too heavy and too plain. How about a slice of lemon meringue pie? No, a chocolate mousse, to go with my drink. That would be nice." Yes, nice, and not something we had had in weeks.

And I would eat not a bite of any of it. Well, maybe a bite or two of the omelet. Cook did a really good job with all the food, really, _when she wasn't fucking MY FATHER!_

Cook and her staff would have a very, very late night, cleaning up after all the additional cooking, and a very, very early morning. As always. Cook and her staff were always the first ones up. The cooking fires didn't start themselves, you know.

"Yes, of course, Miss Hale. Anything else you require?" Mrs. Wilson would never be shaken tonight, but that was fine. There was more than a week of nights left before the wedding.

"Yes, the fresh air will help clear my head, I'm sure Carol's ready to prepare me for the ride by now, right? Cook, remember, tight cap on the thermos." And I glided back up the stairs.

...

As Carol and I rode in the carriage, I kept staring at her. How to fire the opening salvo? I just didn't know how. Something like the following: _So, do you wiggle your ass against my father when he's fucking you during your period?_ Mother had said those words so casually, but I couldn't even imagine saying them out loud without flinching inside.

So I just glared at her.

"Pleasant weather today, Carol, wasn't it?" I asked sweetly. It was pleasant today, that is, if you wished to make popsicles out of your fingers ... that were mittened. I saw my breath as I spoke, and Carol was shivering.

I wasn't. I was on fire, as I was staring at the girl _who was fucking my FATHER._

"Yes, Miss Hale," she agreed meekly.

"Hm. I think I need to drink some soup." I suggested.

"Yes, Miss Hale," Carol answered. She attempted to open the thermos.

She had very strong hands, thanks to her years of service.

Cook's hands were much, much stronger. She could not get the cap to turn no matter how hard she tried.

So we had to stop the carriage, and she had to trudge through the snow in her formal shoes, slipping twice, and have the driver open the thermos — it took him more than a minute as she stood out in the cold, suffering as the snow snuck into her shoes — for me to get my cup full of soup. The carriage started up again as I took miserly sips of hot broth, staring at Carol shivering through the curtain of steam rising from my cup, warming my face.

"Oh, you _poor thing!_ You must be so cold, Carol." Her lips were blue. "Here, have some of my soup." I extended my arm, offering the cup in a friendly fashion.

"Th-th-that's-t's-t's qu-qu-ite al-ll-ll right, Miss-ss-ss." Carol looked overcome.

Carol didn't look anything like the girl in my arms, but those two moment married themselves in my mind: my absolute cruelty to Carol and my even worse cruelty to this girl. After all, Carol is still alive, and would be much longer than the little thing in my arms. Carol eventually escaped me.

Eventually.

But not from this memory. Not that night.

"No, Carol, I absolutely insist!" And, as I extended my arm toward her, and as her shaking hands reached out to the cup, reached out to me, in supplication, I let the cup go the instant before her hands could grasp it.

It was helpful that we had also hit a bump just then; it completely covered my gesture. ... Of course, we hit a bump every three seconds, so the "accident" wasn't entirely unplanned.

"Oops! Clumsy me!" I cried as hot soup splattered all over her blouse and petticoat.

No, she didn't get hurt. No, she didn't get burned. Oh, well.

But guess who would be up all night tonight washing, and rewashing, the stink of chicken broth out of her clothes?

I lent her my hanky as she obligingly and continuously apologized. More things for her to wash. But she didn't get any soup at all from the emptied cup.

I'm actually glad she didn't die of hypothermia as we returned to the house. She had a big day ahead of her tomorrow, and the next day, ... and the next. And I would play the leading rôle in those big days of hers.

...

The next morning a bleary-eyed Carol brushed my hair as I glared at her in the mirror. She brushed it so gently, almost adoringly. I gloated, looking at her reflexion, but then, I couldn't stand the touch of her hands on me any more.

"You know, Carol," I said, savoring the name on my tongue, "I'll just wear my hair down today."

"... yes, Miss Hale," she undid the pins, and started brushing my hair down. I stopped her, grabbing her hand.

"I'll do that, Carol, why don't you take care of the flowers now?" New ones were always replacing old ones. Royce was very diligent in this regard.

"Yes, Miss Hale," Carol responded dully. I saw her fighting not to sway in place.

...

I left supper again early, and snuck downstairs.

They were all standing already. They must have posted a look-out.

I looked over toward Carol. She was swaying. This was going to be so much fun!

"You know, Mrs. Wilson, ..." I began, but people were already in motion, so I raised my voice: "What's going on?"

"We're preparing the carriage for you, Miss Hale," was Mr. Jones' calm response.

"What in Heaven's name for?" I asked with an unaffected shocked tone, stopping the frantic movement in its tracks.

Well, stopping _this_ frantic movement. The servants stood in place, expectant and confused.

"I'm sorry, Miss Hale, my error." Mr. Jones took this blow of mine well. I gave him a cross look anyway, loving this moment of power over them all. Loving the chaos and tumult soon to come.

"Yes, well, I came down to say that I wasn't particularly pleased with supper tonight either ..." and waited for Cook's response. It didn't come. O! If only I could have been present at the talking-to she must have received for my sake! "... but that's not important right now. My wedding is upon me, and I find I need help to memorize a _lied _I need to sing to my husband at the reception. If I could borrow Carol again to read out the German to me, it would be a great help ..." I looked at Mrs. Wilson expectantly.

But the answer didn't come from her. "But, Miss Hale, I don't even _know_ German ..." Poor Carol! Speaking out of turn? She must have had a difficult night last night.

That was nothing to what she'd be facing today.

Carol stopped herself as all eyes, except mine, looked to her. I was staring right at Mrs. Wilson.

"I'm sorry," I laughed easily, but the menace was plain in the laughter, "did I just hear someone deny my request? I really must get my hearing checked by that new Dr. Callin or Cullum or whatever his name is. Two times in two days, is it, Mrs. Wilson, that servants are speaking out of turn? Please tell me I'm wrong, for no representative of the Hale family would _ever _show us in a bad light, isn't that right?"

I had just put Mrs. Wilson in an impossible situation: she would either tell me I was wrong, or tell me the servants, and by extension, she, herself, were a discredit, and by my implication tell me the Hale family was a discredit. She could say nothing right here. Mrs. Wilson remained silent for a second, but then took the blame.

"No, Miss Hale, you are right: this is entirely my fault in mismanaging the ..."

"Oh, no! Mrs. Wilson, perish the thought!" I exclaimed, seeing an even better scenario. "What we have here is a real opportunity! The staff needs a forum to voice their complaints and concerns to their employers. We could have you _organize._ That way, on a weekly basis, your union representative would talk with Mother and present your latest demands. It's all the rage these days! I'll tell Mother at breakfast tomorrow morning."

Mrs. Wilson's usually stoic face drained of color. "Miss Hale, ..." she began imploringly.

"No, it's all settled now, Mrs. Wilson. Mr. Jones, are Tuesday afternoons good for you? I'll have Mother mark it on her calendar. This is so wonderful: the Hale house always prides itself on progress. We must keep that great wheel turning, mustn't we, now?" Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jones exchanged a look, and I smiled at them warmly.

"Now," I continued, "as for tonight. I will now retire to my room, and I need Carol there with me." I looked over at her as I said this. "Do you hear me, Carol?"

"Yes, Miss Hale," she whispered, barely able to stand.

"Oh, Carol! Look at you! Are you not well?" I asked, my voice filled with sincerity that I didn't really have.

"I am well, Miss Hale," Carol responded, looking down at her food. I wondered if she stood there long enough would she fall face first into that soup or that stew or whatever it was the servants were eating.

"Mrs. Wilson, I am so concerned for Carol. Look at her! She obviously hasn't been eating enough," ... because of me, "so a slight change in plans is in order. Carol is not to leave this table until she has two full servings of ... what is that, Cook?"

Mr. Jones responded. Meals for the family and the servants were his responsibility, of course. "That is beef barley soup with black bread, Miss Hale."

"Oh, Cook!" I cried. "You have been holding out on us! We get nothing like this upstairs! Beef barley soup? That is my favorite!"

'My favorite' food that I had never in my life tasted. _Common food for commoners!_

"I tell you what, Cook, have a small bowl of that brought up to my room tonight," it _did_ smell really good, "... with a French baguette instead, if you please," because I surely would not have my lips touch _black bread, _the staple of those socialists in Soviet Russia, "and please make sure Carol finishes her two helpings before she comes up. Please don't rush, Carol, I don't wish to have your belching interrupting the reading, so unseemly! ... I'll only be waiting in my room until you arrive, so, please, don't hurry on my account." Nothing like leaving conflicting instructions for the underlings. No matter what she did, she could not escape my ire.

"And," I added, "Mr. Jones, what is for lunch tomorrow?"

Mr. Jones responded instantly, "Miss Hale, for lunch tomorrow, you will be having the _foie gras _as an ..."

"Nonono, Mr. Jones, forget all that. Tomorrow for lunch we will be having this," I said waving toward the servants' table.

"Miss Hale?" Mr. Jones asked, befuddled.

"What's the problem?" _Besides Mother going on an absolute rampage._ _Besides Cook having to undo all the preparations she's done already for tomorrow's lunch. _"The twins will love it! And it's so ... authentic! bucolic! It'll be a hit, and such a wonderful surprise for the family!" Well, _'surprise'_, yes, but _'wonderful' _may not be the word Mother would use tomorrow.

Mr. Jones didn't have a response.

"Good, now that's settled, I'm going to need a love seat brought to my room for Carol to sit in as she reads to me. Right now. Oh! I'm supposed to leave for Vera's before lunch tomorrow, but I do so wish to stay for lunch here. Mr. Jones I need two servants to go to Vera's house right now to request that my visit with her be pushed back into the afternoon, this is much too important a message to be transmitted so impersonally by shouting over the telephone, yes?"

Mr. Jones nodded his head, and the room cleared again to do my bidding. Carol, Mr. Jones and Mrs. Wilson were all that was left. And Cook and her staff in the kitchen.

"Now," I said, looking over to Cook, "look at Carol! She is going to need some help, I think. Carol, before you come up to my room, please change into your sleep wear. I know it's informal, but I wish to have an informal setting for the reading. You'll need help doing this, won't you, Carol?" It wasn't really a question. I pointed at a girl with my chin in Cook's staff who was probably fourteen or so. "You." I said, imperiously. The girl shrank behind Cook. "You will assist Carol tonight. Make sure she's dressed and awake and alert in my room when I arrive to receive her ... if that's okay, Mrs. Wilson?"

"Of course, Miss Hale." Mrs. Wilson acquiesced.

But it wasn't okay. The girl was probably the scullery maid, which meant a more senior member of cook's staff would be doing her arduous chores, passing on her work to other members. Cook would probably be mopping the floors tonight.

"Good," I responded. "I must talk with Mother about the wedding. Carol," I also pointed my chin at the girl whose name I didn't know, whose name I didn't care to know, "I'm expecting you two in my room when I do go up to retire." I smiled. "Ta-ta." I sang as I glided back upstairs.

...

When I did arrive in my room Carol and the girl were standing by my desk in a very intimate embrace. The girl was whispering something to Carol whose shoulders were shaking. _What?_ I cleared my throat. They leapt apart, and the girl pressed something in Carol's hands.

It was a hanky. Carol had been crying. Serves her right; _fucking MY FATHER!_

"Hm." I said, "who in the world put the love seat so far from my bed? I need Carol right beside me as she's reading to me. You." I turned on the girl who took a step back. No Cook to hide behind this time. "Get some help up here to move the loveseat. Also, did you have any coffee, Carol?"

"No, Miss Hale," Carol spoke to the floor.

"Bring up two cups of coffee for me and Carol, too, girl. Okay, off you go, now, don't just stand there gaping!" The girl scurried off, giving me a curtsy and a wide berth.

Mother came up with the servants.

"Rosalie Hale! What on Earth is going on here?" _She_ wanted to give _me_ trouble? We'll see about that.

"Mother, the wedding, remember? Days away? No time to waste!"

Mother looked at me, the servants moving the love seat to my bed, and to Carol in her night clothes.

"What does your maid so dressed have _anything _to do with your wedding?" Mother demanded.

I looked at Mother. I looked back to Carol. Mother was looking at Carol and me ... jealously.

_MOTHER was __fucking__ Carol!_

_Well, not tonight_, _Mother dear!_

"Mother, do you wish me to flub Goethe's _HeidenRöslein_ during the reception? Do you wish me to look the fool in front of all those guests and my new husband? How do you expect an heir if all he does is laugh at me during the honeymoon?"

Mother looked nonplussed.

"I've work to do tonight, Mother, so out-out-out," I commanded breezily as I waved her away.

Mother stood still for three seconds, fuming, but then she turned on her heel and exited my room, slamming the door behind her.

_"Bridget!" _I heard her shout for her own maid. Hm. Maybe she likes them old and frumpy?

I turned to Carol who looked at me astounded. "Miss Hale, I have never seen anyone ..."

"You're not going to say anything untoward about Mother, are you?" I cut her off curtly.

"No, Miss Hale, it's just that I've never seen anyone stand up to ..."

She must be really, really tired to have missed the hint.

"You're saying you've never seen anyone be determined, be courageous, be forceful, ... in short, be a Hale?" I asked.

Carol swallowed. The servants filed out having completed their task, having seen me trump Mother and having heard me give my little speech. Word didn't even need to circulate as it had just hit about half the household already.

It was okay: _they'd see more of me tomorrow night!_

The girl returned with the coffee.

"Okay, let's get started!" I took a sip of the coffee. Excellent, as always. Rich, thick, dark, full-bodied ... almost syrupy. I hopped into bed, sitting up and took a couple of spoonfuls of the soup.

_Delicious!_ Those commoners sure knew how to eat! It was a thick soup. I was surprised Carol could even stand there with two bowls of it in her stomach.

"Carol," I motioned to her, "come sit on the love seat."

The girl started to back out of the room.

"Stay," I dripped menace into each the words, "here, girl." She whimpered and shook in place. I glared at her. I wondered if she even saw it, because she dropped her eyes so quickly.

"Now, Carol," I began to my droopy-eyed maid when a quiet knock sounded on my door.

_"What is it now, for goodness sake!"_ I motioned to the girl who ran to the door and opened it.

One of the man servants was panting outside my door. He had just returned from Vera's with the news that the afternoon would be fine. I knew it would be fine, already: Vera didn't stand on formality. She had married very far down, after all. Good thing she didn't fall for one of our servants ... that would be awkward. I dismissed the messenger with a wave, making sure the girl stayed in my room. I felt warm from the soup and from the image of Cook mopping the floor. _Grumble at me!_

"So, Carol, read to me the first verse of the _HeidenRöslein_," I passed her the closed book of Schubert _lieder_ and snuggled into my bed, closing my eyes.

"Miss Hale, I don't know which one it ..." was Carol's plaintive response.

I sighed. "The help these days ..." I grumbled as I opened my eyes and stuck out my hand for the book. She passed it back to me timidly, and I flipped it to the piece, pointing at the first verse.

She took it and started reading: "Sa in nab in rozelean stayin?"

"Carol! Carol, stop!" She did. I didn't know she could torture me like that. "Okay, that was a ... good start, but I need to see you eye to eye when you're reading to me, and I'll read the words out first to you and then you repeat them to me, okay?"

Carol looked at me. I sighed.

"Girl, come here. Give Carol a pillow and then you may go." The girl looked like I had just released her from prison. "Tell Mrs. Wilson that I'll require Carol's help all tonight, so she be here for the roll, okay?"

The girl complied and exited quickly and quietly, looking at Carol. I wonder if she was afraid if I was going to eat Carol, or something.

A few days later, that would have been an entirely justified fear.

Carol was now lying on the pillow, her eyes still open but clouded and unfocused.

"Okay, Carol, are you listening?" I didn't wait for an answer as I began:

Sah ein Knab' ein Röslein stehn,  
Röslein auf der Heiden,  
War so jung und morgenschön,   
Lief er schnell es nah zu sehn,   
Sah's mit vielen Freuden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,  
Röslein auf der Heiden.

I looked to Carol. Her mouth was slightly parted and her eyes were closed.

"Carol?" I called quietly. She gave no response.

_Change in plans!_ I thought gleefully. I was going to keep her up all night, but I needed to sleep, too. I shifted my blanket so that it covered her.

I am a very light sleeper. If Carol or anybody else moved that blanket, I would feel it. Neither parent of mine would have Carol tonight.

...

"Carol?" I whispered. Carol stirred.

"Carol, wake up, it's getting past breakfast time." Her eyes flew open, and she blushed as she took in her surroundings.

_Commoner._

She flew out of the love seat, words of apology tripping over themselves to get out of her mouth. I waved her to silence and had her make me presentable before I dismissed her.

...

"Mother," I said, earning a glare from her as I sat down, _very late,_ to breakfast, "I think one of the servants left this in my room last night."

I held out a pamphlet of a translation of Marx and Engels' _Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. _Mother's condescending look turned instantly to one of shocked fury.

_"Mr. JONES!" _she screeched, jumping up from the table.

This was turning out to be a _very _good day. I was glad I had kept that pamphlet pressed into my hands from a striking worker near the bank a few weeks ago. It turned out to be more useful than I had thought it would be.

...

Lunch time was even better. Mother had run off at breakfast and had _went downstairs_ for more than an hour raking each servant over the coals. When the black bread and barley soup arrived, the twins did start digging into it hungrily, but Mother again was out of her chair and down the hall, on the warpath. I headed off on foot to Vera's house by myself. The exercise felt very good after the warm glow of leaving the house in that uproar.

I couldn't wait to see what schemes would arrive for me to plague the servants tonight.

... but it turned out the servants were up all night anyway, but not because of me. Or, more correctly, they _were_ up all night because of me, but not because of anything I had planned. I had other things on my mind.

I was busy  
being raped  
and then  
consumed by venom  
that night ...

... so I was otherwise engaged.

* * *

**A/N:** A translation (mine) of the first verse of Goethe's _HeidenRöslein_ ("Heather Rose") is as follows:

A boy saw a rose,   
a rose in the heather,  
a young and beautiful morning rose,  
he ran quickly to see it more closely,  
and saw it with many joys.

Rose, Rose, Rose Red,   
Rose in the heather.

Appropriate, isn't it, for Rosalie's wedding? Too bad her wedding, or, more precisely, _her bridegroom_ wasn't appropriate for her. You can't win them all, I guess. That is, unless you do. Maybe Rosalie's 'life' will have a better turn someday?


	10. Her Name: Mother — PPS: Gwendolyn Hale

**Section Summary:** Mother. She was right, in her way, and I was wrong. But being right? It was nothing to gloat about. The surprising thing for me? Mother didn't gloat, but she didn't whine, either. Instead she did what she must. Mother _is_ a Hale.

* * *

_Rochester, September, 1933 — former Hale household and cheapside__:_

Besides earning my post-doc degrees, watching Vera, and tracking my killers ... who said eternity had to be boring? Besides Edward, that is. I watched my family. Father died, but one thing he didn't do was to sleep around, as I had led myself to believe. He didn't bed Carol.

Now you could say that his habits would be affected by the shocks: a dead daughter and lost employment, but I like to give him the upper hand here. I would like to have my faith restored in one parent, at least.

And, funny thing: it was restored in two of them. I never thought that would be possible.

Mother was right about everything, in her way. Father was let go, and he had to move very quickly to let the house. He would actually need to give money to sell it, given the times, but he did manage to use his existing set of contacts to locate a family moving up in the world.

They were the O'Malley family. They brought their own servants, so most of ours were also let go. My family couldn't keep one. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in one generation. Very sad.

The O'Malley family did keep Carol. They needed her. They had a 12 year old girl named Claudia. Irish, of course, so she was a freckled thing. Cute, I supposed, in her own way. You didn't know if she had pale white skin with brown dots or brown skin with pale white dots. Very curly red hair — unruly! — that must have been a chore for Carol to brush in the morning. She was so tiny for her age she looked like an animated china doll. But she had a joyful laughter that never stopped and a happy glow in her eyes. I hoped she would be a good mistress to Carol.

As I was not.

Father had to retrench. Severely. He did amass quite a bit over the years, even with the expenditures of a large household, and he immediately put all that money in trust that was doled out to the family, parsimoniously, in monthly allotments. The trust began immediately, so there was no money to be tied up in court at his death. Father was very, very smart when it came to money.

He showed Mother how to economize, and they all moved into a one bedroom apartment above a grocery. I kept waiting for Mother to break or to whine. She didn't. Her stiff back never altered from its life of ease to this new life of hardship. She did the laundry and paid the bills and cooked the meals ... and took care of the boys. It was if she expected this fate her entire life, and, when it came, accepted it with dignity.

I didn't love her. I didn't think I _could_ love her. But my respect for her, as she shouldered a burden I never thought she would, grew and grew as I watched her every day in that little apartment working all day and into the night just to make ends meet, just to make life for my brothers bearable, just to make sure that the heat bill was paid on time, as so many heat bills in Rochester weren't. My brothers didn't get consumption, and it was Mother who fought tooth and nail to ensure that.

I was watching a woman I never knew. Because I _did_ never know her. I only knew her given name, Gwendolyn, from an earlier, painful, memory I had kept from my human life; I didn't even know her family name. All I had ever known her as is as a Hale. What was her life like before she had me? Had she grown up like this? An immigrant child in a family struggling in this New World? I didn't know. I'll never know now.

But I do know this. Mother is one person who would not bend and who would not break, no matter what you threw at her.

Mother is a Hale.

... and she showed me that's actually something to be proud of.


	11. The Soul: the Singer — I: Scents, Venom

**Section Summary:** I come home from hunting wolf — _ugh, wolf!_ — to find this? You'd figure with everything giving this area a wide berth because I had marked it as _my_ territory, this would be a safe haven for the girl. But how can I protect her from herself? ... How can I protect her from me?

* * *

They say that the third time's a charm. There may be something to that aphorism, because the third time I had to save the girl, I almost didn't. But I had to save more than just her life, and I had to keep saving her through the rest of the night, even as she slept.

A mild way to put it was that it had been an interesting night.

As the girl 'requested', I had supplemented my own hunting with some additional supplies to help keep her alive and healthy.

But first I needed to hunt. I always needed to hunt these days, at least once a day. Tonight's prey? _ Wolf._

I had never hunted wolf before, and that was for good reason: even the stinking herbivores smelt better than what I was currently draining. What does wolf blood taste like? Here's a hint. You know dog smell, right? You have a dog, or you have neighbors that have dogs, isn't that so? Dogs need to go on walks, right? And then the excrement needs to be cleaned, yes?

No. Next time, instead of removing it, eat it. You're now about one-tenth of the way there. Next: go on a month vacation, locking the dog inside the house. You get bonus points if you have carpeting absorbing that stench instead of wood floors. Now: when you return home, hold your breath for as long as you can before you open the door, so that when you do open the door, you simply must breath in, gasping in a big gulp of air.

That wall smashing you to ground is what? Rotting, wet dog smell? Yes: it's so strong that you need to vomit, to faint, and to run away for at least half a mile to get away from it. However, do none of those things; instead, go into the house, closing the door behind you.

Got that smell? That is, if you survived? Then you've got about half the strength of the smell and the taste on my tongue as I took this animal's life.

_Why even hunt wolves?_ you ask. Remember: nobody — _nothing!_ — touches a Hale or what is a Hale's. Every single one of my hunts would have targeted one of these disgusting animals if I hadn't got the "ecological balance" lecture from the Cullens when I was starting this new lif ... that is, existence. So I had to settle for wolf every third hunt.

The local packs got the message. I had to go a couple miles past Fruitdale to find this one. _Good!_ I would probably, out of obligation, hunt wolves for a very long time, perhaps as long as they existed. Obligation could be a heavy burden, but it was the Hale way. Would I choose indifference or ennui, instead? No. There were things that I cared about and things that I didn't, but the things _in _my care were totally my responsibility. If wolves felt the need to take the girl's life, well, then, they would pay for that need. They _all_ would pay a very long time for that need.

Even if that meant what I drank was _this._

_Of course_ the girl _just had_ to pick wolves to attack her, and not a nice, juicy mountain lion, which I suggested to her. Anything else but wolves. Anything ... even a herd of raving rabid rabbits or a murder of crows or ... bloodthirsty zombified sheep even, but no.

Wolves.

I had to clean my mouth out somehow. And an obliging bison provided more than enough musky vomit taste (seasoned with a disagreeable urine tang finish) to take away the much worse taste of _wolf_ in my mouth and throat. Since the day I removed the girl, I've been so glutted with all the blood from the animals I've drunk that I feel bloated, swimming in the blood. But the full feeling in my gut just up and walks away whenever I get into close proximity to her.

Why does she have to have a floral scent, of all things? Most vampires have scents that are floral as well: her scent seems to have been crafted to complement and then to attract any and all vampires within miles. _Here I am!_ it says, calling to all that could cross its trail.

But for Edward ... well, I'm not the pitying type, but all I can say is: poor, poor Edward.

For me, her scent is at least five times more appealing than the scent of any human I've smelled: my honeysuckle and rose scents — wonderfully fitting, don't you agree? — blends perfectly with her lavender and freesia scents to create and to complete a flower garden scent that combines to give the smell of restfulness, peace, with hints of joy, even. I've smelled nothing like it, and I have smelled more than enough humans to know this. Both in Rochester and Atlanta, quite a few have come within my awareness. I've been very, very close to many humans as I exacted my revenge.

But this was nothing at all to the pull her scent had on Edward. It was felt more than _two hundred times_ more powerfully that what I felt. For Edward, her appeal was more than _one thousand times_ more than any other human he's encountered. And he does know the measure of the taste of human from personal and direct experience: he's drunk from quite a few humans during his rebellious lark.

Carlisle gave us all the lecture about what he learnt when he was in Italy with the Volturi: _la tua cantata_ — _she sings to you._ And I thought I understood what Carlisle was saying. But I didn't.

I didn't even understand when Edward introduced me to her, _in my very room!_ The gall! Even though she had forced the Cullens hand with her demanding to see me playing the invalid, you would figure Carlisle would be quick enough to say something about _dangerous infection_ to keep her away.

Was Carlisle quick enough on his feet to do this? You need only see Carlisle on the dance floor with Esmé to know the answer to that one. Esmé loves Carlisle to death, but she so loves to dance as well. Dance, that is, not "stumble around on the dance floor". She's always happy when Carlisle begs Edward to cut in.

Dr. Carlisle Herky-Jerky Cullen.

So Edward brought the girl to my room, and I was so angry at Edward bringing this plain girl into my presence — _my rival_ — that I didn't take much note that she had absolutely no scent at all.

None.

I also didn't notice that Edward's eyes went from pitch black to pitch blacker when he breathed in. He had just hunted at dawn, too. He had glutted himself to play with his little pet human today.

I thought his eyes were showing his fury with me, so I bated him with my thoughts.

_Oh, now I see you prefer the submissive inferior PLAIN types. Does she ask your permission before she uses the water closet in her own house?_

Edward sighed. When he breathed in, his eyes went pitch blackest. I was spoiling for a fight, being so confined for a year now, and I delighted at the thought of the two of us going at it right in front of the little mouse of a girl. 'Meeting the in-laws' in the best possible way.

But instead of pouncing, as I hoped, he escorted her out. And I furiously screamed at him from my mind as he walked away with that ... _that_ _HUMAN:_ _Or is she too scared even to ask and just urinates all over herself? Is that what you like, Edward? A Little Missus Nothing to walk three paces behind you at all times?_

I had only seen her for a moment, and _I_ _HATED_ _HER_.

It was only on her next visit that I did take in her scent. Did I _ever_ take in that scent! I didn't hate her so much — _or at all!_ — on that visit. I loved her so much that it would have been wonderful to have her for supper.

I was only joking! ... maybe. No, I had sworn off humans, and I meant it. But Esmé was allowed an accident, right? And Edward had his wild child years. Mighten they permit and forgive one little mistake?

Esmé did sit closer to me, that is, between me and an easy reach of the girl, during that visit. And, of course, in the first visit Edward positioned himself similarly.

I wasn't _that_ newborn, for goodness sake! ... But she did smell so incredibly _sweet! ..._

It was after that visit that I connected her lack of scent in the first visit to what I had thought was Edward's fury but actually was his agony. Her scent was so wrapped up around him that nothing remained for me to smell. The scent of his sunlight shined down upon her lavender and freesia to combine and to produce the resulting honey scent from Edward. She completed him. Not in the romantic way, but in an essential way: they were one scent, they _had_ to be one being.

The girl could not make Edward a part of her. But the converse was not true at all. In fact, there is a way for a human and a vampire to be one, and the vampire has the ability to complete that_ consummation_. Her every heartbeat _sang_ to him — the siren's irresistible call — and the song it sang was this: _consume me._ Her every breath coiled the tendrils of her scent around him so strongly that it pulled him right into her. Her every breath directed his teeth to her neck.

You may think that Edward could grow used to the smell. After all, you toil away in a pineapple plant in Hawaii all day, not even noticing the awful stench after a minute or two, so Edward could adapt, right? Edward could become desensitized, yes?

I'm sure, if they ever got to a point in a 'relationship' where they would 'discuss' these issues, he would say something like that, but that's really not the case: adaptation, desensitization, these words imply change. Vampires are eternal. We don't change. But eternity does accumulate our experience. The five-hundredth time Edward would have felt the girl's call would feel just as irresistible as the first time. But then he would have all those other experiences of resisting that beacon to draw strength from ... or to re-experience torment from. It doesn't get easier; it gets harder. But a vampire has the will to do just about anything.

Even to stop drinking blood as it flows from the gash in the neck into the mouth.

Theoretically.

You see, these days I have been trying to stop mid-drink as the pulsating blood flowed into me. If I could stop myself from feeding on an animal, that is, if I could resist the call of that repellent blood, then it would strengthen me to resist the call of the girl's intoxicating blood.

I know I could stop drinking at any time. I know this. Carlisle does this all the time. It was he who ripped open the neck of that doe — my first drink — and handed the struggling pulsating meal off to me as easily as if he were passing me a medical journal. But me? Maybe, like Carlisle, you need a few hundred years of temperance?

I know I can stop, but I haven't yet. Not even for a wolf.

If but a single drop of that girl's blood trickled into my mouth ...

Part of the problem is the meal itself. "Completely draining" an animal of blood means taking only approximately forty percent of its blood. By then the heart would stop, and, at that point, it becomes impossible to drain the other sixty percent.

Notice I didn't say 'very difficult', I said 'impossible', because the other part of the problem is the venom.

It's a mistake to think of a vampire as a walking sack of venom. We, in fact, produce very little venom. The major centers of fluid production in a human become the sources of venom in the vampire. What does that mean? Well, what do you have going on all the time, besides the breath and the pulse? Swallowing. Most of the venom, which means, a very tiny trickle before and during feeding, comes from the mouth.

Most of it.

And you blink, too, but not one drop of venom comes from our eyes. Vampires lose their tear ducts. After all, we are simply vectors now. We have an origin at our creation, and then we move along through time and eternity, thirsting and drinking. Vectors don't have feelings; vectors have no need to cry, but vectors must continue along a path. And the way we continue is to consume the life-blood of others, and what helps us to consume? Venom.

So, how does venom paralyze its victim if there is so little of it? Venom is like a virus, and its production source is blood. The very tiny trickle from the mouth is "eased" into the meal by the teeth, and then, when it touches the victim's blood, it spreads like wildfire. It specifically targets the blood cells, rendering them inert, then explodes out from those cells to all cells surrounding them. The heart of the victim serves as an excellent pump to carry the infected/infecting dying blood cells throughout the entire body, rendering all adjacent cells inert and at the same time restoring them to an idealized state.

We vampires are beautiful to behold, are we not? Perfect, in fact, "thanks" to our transformation.

So, as soon as a vampire bites and for as long as the heart beats, the race is on between the vampire and the venom. Exsanguination is forty percent of the blood, but the vampire is lucky to get, oh, more than half of that blood in uncontaminated, digestible form.

The duration of that race? A few minutes. If the vampire breaks off before the heart fails, and if the heart continues to beat, carrying the inert oxygen carriers to the rest of the body, spreading the venom, the race last approximately three days. Why so long? Venom is not produced by the inert carrier, it needs vibrant cells to target and to convert to produce more venom. ... And the heart continues to beat until every last one of its own cells are rendered inert. It's odd how the venom seems to target the heart cells last. You'll be pleased to know that the Volturi scientists have known why for quite a long time — nothing like dissecting a living human as its being consumed by venom, now, is there? — each heart cell has a rhythmic beat; it's automatic. The other cells have very little self-movement in comparison. Why attack a moving target in an environment so rich in easier game? Put another way, look at all of those wonderfully lean heart muscle cells: why not save the best for last? A nice little dessert for the venom at the very end of the victim's living part of their existence is what's needed after all those long hours of work listening to the victim's helpless screams.

Does conversion sound painful? Yes, it does, because it is.

You can take my word of first-hand experience on that.

The winner of those three-minute or three-day races? _Nobody_.

You would think that after just having finished a wolf (which, really, wasn't all that much blood ... _thank goodness!)_ I wouldn't be able to consume the blood of a bison. And the above is a partial explanation, but not a complete one.

We do take in both the inert matter and the living blood cells. The blood cells that make it past the venom (quickly, that's why the heartbeat is so helpful as we suck in the blood so eagerly, trying to win against our own venom) are processed efficiently into energy; mostly into potential energy: the meal usually lasts two weeks for a mature vampire. But the inert matter is also processed. It creates the major emission of a vampire. Do you know what that is? It's not venom. It's pheromones. Vampires are not walking sacks of venom: we are walking scent factories.

I've told you my scent, but do you know what my scent is saying? Well, in quite a few cases, pheromones are attractors, and we are very good at attracting our intended prey — that would be humans — with our scent. Ironically, animals know the scent as a warning — _here comes Death!_ — and respond appropriately. Abstinence should be harder for us in that case, but actually not: a good terrified run of the meal gets the blood nicely heated and flowing all the more rapidly. _Mmm, tasty!_

But, importantly, my scent is saying this: _vampire._ How do animals mark their territory? With their scents. Where is a vampire's territory? Wherever their scent is. The scent lasts a week or two, and so nomads really have no territories: they are gone before they can renew the boundaries.

Me, on the other hand, I've marked a good twenty-mile radius around the cabin containing that little brown-eyed girl. No animal is coming anywhere near her now. This _should_ be, strangely enough, the safest place in the world for her. That is, if it weren't for my presence.

So how in the world does she keep managing to call danger to her? Is her name _Sirena? _Hm, ... not a good idea for her name to be that: nothing like naming a thing "Trouble" to call it down upon the named.

So, if another vampire were to wander into this area, they would know I had staked a claim here, because my scent is most definitely _not_ saying: _'looking for a mate'._ Or, at least I _think_ it isn't saying that.

Yes, when a vampire crosses another vampire's scent, there are three possible resulting scenarios. The first scenario, that occurs most often, is that the two vampires, never in sight of each other, avoid each other: one or both leave the area. The older a vampire gets, the more desperately they cling to their own existence: since we have already received our final judgment, we don't wish to endanger that with the possibility of oblivion, because that is what awaits one of the two vampires should they decide to contest the territory.

The second scenario, which happens from time to time, depending on the part of the world (I hear in the tropical climes this happens more often), the vampires dispute the territory. One keeps both territories, and the other ... doesn't: the other doesn't keep the territory because it doesn't keep its existence.

The third scenario hardly ever happens because both need to be emitting the following message: "I am looking for a mate." Then the genders need to align, as well, then they engage in a courtship. Spending eternity together? That's a big step. There's much more than looks, attitude, intellect that goes into that equation. Courtships can last longer that twenty-eight years. Or, if it is love at first sight, which happens, too, I hear — not that I'd know — then the courtship is settled, for one of the parties, instantly. The other party's job is then very easy: accept the undying devotion and return that love, being bound in love as their beloved is so bound. Or rejecting that love, and destroying the beloved.

That destruction would be an act of total mercy, and the beloved, if it had any feeling other than the purest despicable cruelty, would actually help. Once bound by love, a vampire cannot be unbound. Rejection is a death sentence, and destruction by the object of one's love is the kindest way to go. For a vampire with love unrequited, eternity is truly an unbearable curse.

I'm glad that hasn't happened to me, for I actually don't know how to destroy a vampire: the Cullens were mum about that, but I gather it takes at least a vampire to destroy a vampire.

You'd think vampires would be very, very careful about whom they choose to fall in love with. After all: "Is love a fancy or a feeling? ... O no! it is an ever-fixéd mark." Love is a decision, and vampires, with eternity to allow them to see the potential of all the possibilities of a decision like that, should be able to choose wisely. But eternity does not guarantee patience, or wisdom, or rationality. Take the Cullens, for example, and their insane tolerance of Edward's infatuation with this little girl.

Fools.

I mean, this is so simple, so obvious. She is mortal. We are vampires. End of story.

But it wasn't the end of the story, and it isn't so simple. I looked down at the girl with her long brown hair and her almost-vampire-pale skin, sleeping peacefully in my arms, and felt the warmth of her, even through the separating blanket.

Perhaps it isn't as simple as that.

* * *

**A/N 1: **Read about exsanguination (look up hypovolemic shock) on wikipedia.

**A/N 2: **The quotation about love ("... fancy or feeling ...") is an amalgamation of Coleridge's Sonnet VII and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Both were used in Ang Lee's and Emma Thompson's film interpretation of _Sense and Sensibility_ by Jane Austen.


	12. The Soul: the Singer — II: Family Time

**Section Summary: **Nothing like a group of vampires getting together to play family. Except when one of them doesn't march to that happy tune. And then along comes a little cowgirl: _Oh, this is the one we really wanted!_ What to do? What to do?

**WARNING! **Contains a very twisted depiction of Esmé. Contains a description of Rosalie's transformation that may be too much for some, particularly a visceral description of the loss of her reproductive system.

* * *

After Edward and I had patched up our differences following the girl's first invasion ...

Which is to say, after I apologized and after Edward shrugged off my apology ... which is to say, we didn't patch up: Edward simply refused to see reason, and I had to paint on a happy face to keep the peace in the Cullen household. Edward realized, of course, that I wasn't backing down from my totally reasonable position, but I also realized that shouting at him wasn't going to make him see reason.

He never did see reason. Unless 'reason' meant some obstinate fool idea he came up with.

... So, after we "patched up our differences," and after the game of escort — _that Team Edward lost! _— Edward and I went hunting. I figured that being out in the open would be a less confrontational setting, and the air and the distance from the 'mortal' — he refused to allow her to be called 'human' — might clear his head.

We both went our separate ways for our meals. Neither of us were particularly _thirsty,_ after all, we had both recently hunted, but Edward was out every day now just to be sure he could handle a surprise visit ... that he was always encouraging, and for me? Well, I needed to shred something after that girl invaded my space. I was still steamed even though a few days had passed.

We rendezvoused at a large stone embedded in the earth overlooking miles and miles of forest and sat for a moment between kills, just absorbing the peaceful quiet of a forest that had two vampires in it. The very peaceful quiet of all the animals in the area high-tailing it away from us. As if that would do them any good.

Out of courtesy, I tried not to think too much around Edward. It was really a hard life for him, hearing every whispered thought. Internal debates were shouting matches for him, and sometimes he winced around me. Not that I had _anything_ to debate about internally. My new lif ... _existence_ was just super-great and getting better all the ... well, not time, all the _eternity._

I tried, but I just had to discuss this with him away from his _whatever-Edward-wants_ parents.

"So, about your visit tonight ..." I started.

"Rosalie." Edward sighed.

"Edward, go to her to break it off now. Now, Edward, before one of you gets hurt."

"Rosalie, it's not like that." Edward explained. "She's mortal; there's nothing to break off."

Edward was such a blind fool. The only love he had ever had was with Glory: he wanted to be the young, conquering hero bravely dying in battle. He didn't even know what real love was ...

"And you do?" Edward interrupted my critique, that I was _not sharing with him, by the way_.

"Okay, Edward, maybe I don't know what real love is," _because, as you know, my dear brother, I've never received it,_ I reminded him as gently as I could, trying not to blame him for the comedy of my existence — I was created to be the mate of this amazing _...ly conceited_ vampire who had absolutely no feelings for me. My very existence was a cruel joke with no punch line — "but I know what falling in love is like, and you've got that feeling, Edward. You've got it bad." _And for a human? Edward, why? You don't want me; fine. Pick another vampire ... __any__ other vampire! But not a human, Edward; please._

"First of all, she's _not_ human..." Edward began.

_Here we go again with __that__,_ I sighed. Edward was convinced that just because she was his singer, she was something Other. I didn't buy it.

Edward ignored that thought, "... and second of all, you may not know what real love is, but you have it, Rosalie. We love you."

"What?" I was stunned.

"Rosalie," Edward got that pontificating tone of his, "I know you're not ready to hear this, but I also know what you're planning on doing, so I'm going to say it now. We love you, Rosalie. In a very real way, you are my sister; you are a part of our family. We love you."

"Oh, really?" I barked out a laugh. I ignored his _I know what you're planning_ comment. He always knew everything, even when he was wrong, and I wasn't planning anything in particular. Edward was being Edward, as usual, but his last comment really set me off. "You love me? You and your little 'family' love me? That's just great. You love me. Wow! Edward, I'm so flattered. And that makes everything tolerable, now, does it? That makes everything okay?"

"Rosalie," Edward tried to interrupt.

"No, Edward, I've got it: you love me. So, here I am: Rosalie Lillian Hale, _the vampire,_ cursed for eternity to be drinking blood that would make excrement taste like salmon mousse and cucumber sandwiches ... _forever. _ But that's okay, because you love me, right?" I snorted.

Edward just stared at me. He _knew_ — the bastard — that if he interrupted now that I would be in hysterics, so he let me continue. This only made me angrier.

"So, here I am, being raped by Royce and his buddies throughout every second of eternity, and that's okay, because the little Cullen family _loves me_ and incidentally has their token 'daughter' that sings well next to their Edward-who-does-everything-and-can-do-no-wrong, is that right, Edward?"

I had hoped murdering those ... those _things_ would somehow wipe away that awful experience, but it didn't: the memories were superimposed, so now I have the leering and lecherous _ghouls_ raping me, their bones shattered and broken, their eyes vacant and staring, their jaws slack, but their pricks and kicks fully functional, fully efficacious. Edward warned me about this on the onset of my odyssey of revenge, and Esmé warned me during it, but I didn't listen. I was on my mission, and my mission's end was Royce. They had warned me, and I didn't listen, but I still blamed them. They created me. They left me with this legacy of pain that I could never wash away. It was their fault. _But they loved me, see, so it was A-O-K._

Edward sighed and murmured, "I knew you weren't ready. I shouldn't have said anything, but ..."

"No, Edward, you did right. You all did right, keeping me inside this whole last year, a prisoner in your house — _can't have the new vampire embarrassing the prim and proper Cullens, now, can we?_ — locking me away from society, from fashion, from the night lights and life of the city, bringing me here to Nowhere, U.S.A. where the major form of transportation is steak and the major distraction is ... is, well, _nothing._ But you all did right, because, as you say, _dear Edward, _you and your darling parents _love_ me. Is that right? Did I understand you correctly there, Edward? You and your little family love me, so everything is just fine. Is that what you're telling me?"

I waited now, daring him to answer me. _Go ahead, Edward, dear: I dare you. Say it._

He dared. "Yes, Rosalie, that's exactly it. We love you, so it's okay. It's not okay for you now, because you're facing everything alone, and you're only reliving your painful memories because that's all you have, that's all you hold onto. But it's okay when you have someone there for you. You don't believe me, but take it from my experience: I know what I'm saying. We love you, it's okay, and, it's not only okay, because they're not only _my_ family. They are _your_ family. Carlisle and Esmé, they love you. We all do. We love you as family. All you have to do, Rosalie, is open your heart. Let our love in, and make new memories with us."

He had dared, and I stared, and I felt the cold air turn colder in my proximity as everything in me hardened and froze. "You know, Edward, I would open my heart, but it stopped beating ten months, one week and four days ago, and that's a memory that will _never_ go away, and it's all thanks to _your_ loving family." I stood up from the stone and left for my next kill, leaving the parting thought. _Break it off, Edward, let the girl's heart continue to beat, as mine does not._

He shouted his "answer" to my receding back: "Rosalie, telegram me from wherever you are in the world when you finally do see beyond yourself, when you finally care more for someone else than you do for yourself and your own selfish concerns! I'll drop whatever I'm doing and visit! I can't wait to see her, the real you! I bet she'll be as beautiful within as she is without!"

_BASTARD!_ I screamed back, and I flitted images of black pots and black kettles and his smug, superior face as he pushed that girl-child-_human_ around. _HUMAN! Did you hear me, EDWARD? She is HUMAN!_

I don't recall seeing any angel's wings on that girl. The only stereotype that cowgirl was missing was a ten-gallon hat. _Howdy-howdy-howdy!_ I pantomimed a buffoon-like caricature of the girl astride her horse, as I galumphed off to my next kill, as if I were in a ho-down.

I was pleased, however, that Edward had called me beautiful. As least he wasn't totally blind. Hm, he had called the girl beautiful, too. So, maybe not totally blind, but utterly lacking in discernment? And I was also pleased that with all his ridiculous talk about familial love, he did not trespass on my name. He may have been a meddling bastard of a brother, but at least he was a gentleman in that regard: he knew where I drew the line, and he respected that.

The consoling thoughts did not calm me down much, however, and the next three animals I killed paid for it. Being hamstrung and drawn and quartered while you are still alive? The buck and two doe didn't like that all that much.

Tough luck for them. _Ekalaka._ It was their own damn fault for grazing near a nowhere town in a nowhere state that was the residence of one very angry 'vegetarian' vampire.

I snorted. The Cullens and their terminology: _'vegetarian' ... please! _That's like saying one is a tea-totaller because instead of drinking the vodka straight up, one drinks a Red Snapper mixed drink.

Red Snapper ... it was originally called the Bloody Mary. Maybe I could get that sheriff's daughter to eat some celery before her next visit. Add a little bit of black pepper, some worcestershire and hot sauce, and she's make a very nice cocktail. Cocktail not as in 'cocktail waitress', not as in 'cocktail dress' (although that would improve her looks considerably, I would mention that to Edward as a hint, but then that would give him more reason to waste time with her, not less: _oh, Bella, Rosalie says you should try cocktail dresses ... which ten do you prefer out of these one hundred and fifty I just bought you?)_, but as in 'cocktail drink': Bloody Bella.

Hm. Best not to think about that, even in jest. Edward took his infatuation too far — Edward took _everything_ too far — and the issue of control around her was making him edgy. Well, _more_ edgy. It would be good to see Edward just plain old _irritable_ again, like the 'good old days' back in Rochester.

We finished up our hunt, and those topics we discussed — breaking up with the girl and the Cullens 'love' for me — did not come up again. We didn't need to avoid the topics, we just knew, each of us, that we had said our piece and enough was enough for now.

In a way, Edward truly was a brother to me. Not at all like my human family, but then the twins were really just children, little boys, and we couldn't connect in a substantial way because the age difference was too great. Here, the ages between Edward and me were much, much greater, but then, they weren't. Edward may have had more than thirty years of existence, but he was still a 17-year-old boy, and I was still an 18-year-old woman, and, in that way, as brother and sister, as mind to mind, as vampire to vampire, we did connect.

Not that I was a big jerk like he was. I said we connected, not that we were the same in any way.

But I suppose he couldn't help being a big jerk sometimes. It was the condition of the male sex. _Ooga-ooga! Me see-ums girlie-girlie. Me make-ums lotsa whoopie!_ All he missed to complete the image was for him to drag his knuckles across the ground as he walked, scratching and drooling occasionally.

Why he had to choose the cowgirl was beyond me, but with Edward it always had to be the hard way, didn't it? _Human ... and his singer, too._ That Edward could surely pick them, couldn't he?

Next thing you'd know, he be taking her out for long walks through the woods (horseback riding would spark interesting conversations), even on a hunt! They'd chat about her life, his existence, she'd share her story, he'd share his ...

... No. Wait. _He wouldn't dare._ Rule number one. Rule number one. But then, as I pictured it, them walking through the forest, hand in hand ("Edward, why is your hand so cold?" I could just see that human blinking her big brown eyes at Edward while he turned to jelly), and a big bear comes out to maul them, and Edward saves the day, and then shares our little secret.

Or even without the bear, I'd bet the story would come. _You know, Bella, I'm a vampire, see, and ..._

It was a good thing that Carlisle and Esmé were so preoccupied in the house with their _laboratory experiments_ that had caused Edward and me to explore further afield. The reason why it was good was because Edward and I had parted ways again, so the thoughts I had thought didn't pass through his mind as well. I managed to stop this particular train of thought — Edward telling the girl about us — and the resulting fury it precipitated by the time Edward and I reconnected and headed back to the house.

I had hoped this hunt would calm me. But then, of course, it would have been a wasted effort anyway: the girl decided to pay another visit right after that, dropping hints about her and Edward and _happily ever after _with chicken cordon bleu waiting on the table, no less.

Actually, I would have loved for there to be a way to force Edward to accept that invitation. And I would to have loved to have gone, just to watch him eat that human food. That dead, cooked stuff that needed a digestive system to process.

I would have loved that: watching Edward eat. I would savor every bite he took to please his little tom-boy-girlie-girlfriend.

Then again, if I couldn't go, I would still love it: seeing Edward race back here and _run _to the loo, and then listening to the sounds of regurgitation as the food forced its way back out the way it had come in.

Maybe it could be arranged that he go there every night for supper? That would cure him of his little infatuation post haste.

But news reached us, rather quickly, thanks to Edward, that supper at their house was not to be. She had suddenly caught ill, it seemed.

The way Edward reported this illness, it was clear to see what he blamed for this frailty of this frail little human.

_Edward, I did nothing. __Nothing.__ All I did was invite her to supper: that's totally innocuous._ I thought toward Edward as he reported the reason for his immediate return from the Swan residence.

Sure, my supper invitation for that sweet little thing had a double meaning: one meaning for me, one meaning for her, but it was said only in jest, and there was no way she could have possibly comprehended my _jesting_ intent.

Carlisle and Esmé made compassionate noises, but Esmé gave me a sideways glance that told me the whole story. She had probably run to Edward to give him every gory slanted detail of my "cruelty" to that girl.

"Why is she ill, Edward?" I asked to move him along from his _oh, poor Bella_ rhapsody.

I had never cooed over Royce that much. I had some measure of self-control, even when the stars were in my eyes. But then again, perhaps if Royce had been somebody to coo over ...

"I don't know why." Edward responded, then looked away.

_What?_

"You don't know why, Edward?" I couldn't believe what I had just heard. _Of course,_ he had to know why. All he had to do was to read her mind. Was it some condition too embarrassing to share? He was rather of the private nature, but I was a woman — that is, I _was_ a woman not so long ago — I could handle "private" matters such as womanly travails.

But it wasn't that. "I can't hear her mind. I don't know what her thoughts are." And now I knew why he looked away. He was ashamed, or he was embarrassed of himself. If I were one of the common folk, my mouth would be hanging open. There was such bald honesty in his voice, that I didn't think he was covering for the human girl, but this declaration was beyond understanding. Edward couldn't_ not_ hear other people's thoughts.

"That's why I'm calling on her, that's why I'm spending time with her," he explained to us, "I can't hear her thoughts, so I must know her well enough to make sure she doesn't become a threat to us."

My mouth _did_ drop open at that statement, but my mind was in utter chaos. I looked over to Carlisle and Esmé to see how they were taking this obvious duplicity.

Carlisle was nodding his head in his sage manner, and Esmé looked on at Edward with her loving smile.

I just shook my head and went to my room. I had to do something other than continue this pointless, deluded conversation. _Anything else. _I had to finish the _Summa Theological_ so I could finish the pointless, deluded conversation with Edward about vampires having souls (or _not having souls_ as Edward believed: "Oh, vampires are animate and think and want and will, but they don't have souls" was his sophist argument ... like I said, Edward could delude himself on any point).

Edward was reading Wittgenstein for his defense, so I knew I would win the next round handily. Well, as least there was that pleasure to anticipate.

...

I didn't think the next day could be any worse until I saw Edward preparing to go on an outing. It didn't take a vampire to figure out where he was going.

And Mom and Pop Cullen were sitting there, not lifting a finger to stop this insanity.

"Edward, don't go." Edward just gave me one of his looks.

"Edward."

"Rosalie," was his exasperated retort, "she's ill. I _have _to make sure she's okay."

"Did I just miss something?" I looked around the room desperately, looking for a sympathetic eye from any vampire.

I looked in vain.

"When did it go from assessing a threat — that will _never_ materialize! — to Dr. Edward's house call?"

Edward walked to the front door and didn't look back once as he left.

I turned to Carlisle and Esmé and waited the three minutes for Edward to fall outside 'hearing' range, just staring at them the whole time, my mind in complete turmoil.

"Help," I pleaded. I couldn't believe this: I was _pleading_. _I_ was pleading ... _with the Cullens._ "Please."

Carlisle sighed, but it was Esmé who replied. "It will work out," she said firmly.

This was too much. _"How, in any way, can this WORK OUT!"_ They could hear me just fine, but that didn't stop me from shouting.

"It will work out." Esmé looked at me with determination in her voice and in her eye.

I looked to Carlisle. He looked back.

I opened my mouth to say something, but there was just no point any more.

"Fine. Look, I'm going hunting," I said as I walked out the front door myself, and was running as soon as I closed it behind me.

But I didn't run fast enough: "Don't be gone too long, Rosalie." Esmé's voice floated out to me, always playing the mother.

I just had to get away from them. I had to think. What did Esmé mean by 'it will work out'? How could it possibly work out? Edward's a vampire. She is hu...

No.

No. No. _No!_

Suddenly it came to me why Esmé was so confident 'everything would work out.' She was going to _make_ it all work out.

Carlisle wouldn't turn a healthy human, and that girl was healthy, sudden trifling illness or no. But someone on the point of death? Oh, yes! And, ... _oh, no!_

I could see it now. The human girl on her horse, and then, suddenly, within its senses, a vampire. Not just any vampire, but dear old Mom Esmé. And how would the horse react? It would react like any sane creature when it encounters one of us. It would react in exactly the opposite way that girl reacts. It would buck, start, and run, throwing the rider. And who would be there to catch the girl?

Esmé.

Of course, if the girl got a portion of her head caved in because she had hit a 'rock' as she fell — a 'rock' in the shape of a vampire hand flashing to the back of the girl's head ... if the girl had her stomach punctured from a fractured rib for good measure ... then what?

And just to make sure, Esmé would wait, letting the girl's life bleed away from the internal damage. She would wait until the girl was at the point past heroic measures. And then what? Here comes Esmé, carrying the battered and broken and dying girl to our house and home, screaming with anguish: "Oh, Carlisle, I came across this poor thing as I was out hunting!" ... or out delivering blankets to the poor ... or out scaring horses ... or out adding a new family member to the Cullen clan.

Esmé was all about family. Yes, she was. And I had so thoroughly failed her by not winning Edward's affections. My thoughts weren't simple-minded enough, or I was far too beautiful, or I was — or wasn't — something. Whatever I was, the end result was Edward and I were not mates, which meant Edward was the sulking moody brute that he always was, which means that Esmé was on her mission to find Edward the perfect mate ...

... as she had done _in my case._

I was running through the forest, but that thought stopped me cold in my tracks.

_I was wrong._

I was wrong about the Cullens. I was wrong about everything. Carlisle wasn't the leader of the family; Esmé was. It was always Esmé calling the shots. I always knew she had those boys under her thumb, but I didn't know that beneath that simpering mommy exterior was a cold, calculating vicious acquisitive spider.

The family. The family. _Esmé's family._ Esmé's one big _happy_ vampire family.

... where all the girls can't have babies. Just like Esmé. She was punishing me for her loss. She would rope in that girl and punish her, _forever,_ as well.

And, at that thought, the agony of my transformation came right back to me.

Was the pain the worse part? Was the pain the thing that made me scream?

Yes, ... at first. But then I discovered there was something much, much worse than pain. I was dying ... _fine._ Each cell of me was being turned into this inert matter animated by the vitality of blood, by the vitality in the blood ... _fine._

But then the venom seeped into my reproductive system, and then I felt it, and then I heard it.

A woman has thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of eggs in her ovaries.

What happens when the venom reaches those single cells, each one of them a possible baby, each one of them waiting to receive life, to be alive?

_They scream._

I heard them screaming. I heard thousands of my eggs screaming as the venom attacked them and killed them and turned them into this inert matter that I am, thousands at a time. I heard them screaming.

And I screamed then. I never screamed so long or so loud as I heard each of my babies, every last one of them scream and die. And I begged for them to kill me then as I never begged before.

And Esmé was there, not killing me as I had begged, but holding my hand, telling me it was going to be okay.

Just as Esmé would be there, holding the girl's hand, telling her that her Edward was waiting for her eternally happily ever after.

And it was with that thought that the girl transformed in my mind from a local yokel to a human being, to a person, to somebody who deserved to live, who deserved her babies, who deserved to grow old and die, who didn't deserve this living death. _Nobody_ deserved this unlife.

But, Esmé was going to have the girl turned because she obviously fit so nicely into the Cullen family plan. And there was nothing I could do about it. Because ...

Because I so obviously _didn't fit_ with the family plan. I was the fifth wheel. I could see it in her growing affection toward that girl and in her coolness toward me.

And what do you do with a fifth wheel? With a vampire that's in the way? With somebody who wasn't dancing to the _happy vampire family_ tune?

You don't just turn them loose, now do you? Oh, no! I could hear the plans forming in her thoughts now: _Edward, Rosalie is planning on killing that Swan child!_

And Edward, that unstoppable force, would have me shredded before I knew what was happening. And then he would destroy me as he destroyed the others during his nomadic sojourn. Then I would know how you killed a vampire, because I would be experiencing it first-hand.

_Fine._ I had wanted to die in that alley. I didn't want this existence. I didn't want the Cullen family. I guess I was getting my wish.

And I wouldn't miss it one bit.

I wouldn't miss always being thirsty: always sizing up every single human that came within the limits of my senses and struggling with myself _not_ to consume that glorious, delicious, vibrant blood, because it could be a husband returning to a Vera and her baby Henry, or it could be a father riding with his daughter to visit a vampire family, or it could be an old woman on the point of death, but still cherishing the thought of visiting her great grandchild one more time.

I wouldn't miss always being active: never getting a respite from awareness, from my thoughts, from the Cullens, from the animals running in terror from me, from those delicious, stupid, prying humans.

No rest. Never. Now I would be getting it. And I wouldn't miss one single thing of this wretched — this damned — existence.

Well, I'd miss a few things, I guess.

As much as I railed against the need to hunt, there was nothing like the thrill of it: the chase, the strike, the blood flowing into me, filling me with warmth and power and strength.

And I had just won this round against Edward's "vampires don't have souls" thesis ... of course. He was off studying Peirce now. That Edward. I had to give this to him: he didn't give up. He would (grudgingly) admit when his argument had holes, but then he would go away and come right back with new arguments or old ones with new defenses. He fought hard, but he fought fair.

Little did he know that I had already read Peirce. I couldn't wait to answer his "we are images of the overmind" argument and his skewed ontological reasoning argument. Being destroyed, I wouldn't be able to win those arguments.

Who next? Nietzsche's _Jenseits von Gut und Böse? _Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft?_ All this had been travelled before, and all this would fall under very simple, straightforward reasoning. Or would have, if I had still existed. I would miss crushing Edward's mistaken assumptions and arguments. I would miss Edward admitting defeat on his fundamentally existential philosophy.

And I would miss the music. Edward and I could really do justice to _lieder. _

And I would miss the beauty of the world that my enhanced senses now allowed me to see: looking up at the stars of the constellations and seeing them in their true colors, not as just white dots, looking up and counting more than just the four moons of Jupiter, looking down into a pond, seeing the light refracted into thousands of fragmented rainbows, seeing beyond the Roy G. Biv into the infrared and ultravoilet wavelengths, seeing the pond scum teaming with algae, seeing the wind move the leaves ever so gently on a warm summer day, carrying the clean smell of fresh air and the scent of the next kill.

And I would miss learning and studying and doing things that had been forbidden me as a human girl out in society, advancing her family.

And I would miss playing vampire tag and winning against that snot-nosed Edward every once in three hundred games. And I would miss Carlisle idiotic herky-jerky dance, and I would miss Esmé waiting by the door for her Carlisle at exactly 9 PM.

And I would miss just existing. Knowing that day would follow night, but getting that surprise to interrupt the monotony of eternity, anyway: a meteor streaking across the sky, or a visit from a stupid human girl, or a snowfall that made snow just perfect for slush balls smacking into the back of Edward's head. Or anything. Or everything.

The thing about being destroyed? About oblivion? I would miss all that, but I wouldn't because _'I'_ wouldn't exist to miss those things ... and I would miss that, too: my self-awareness, even if that self-awareness was self-loathing.

So, I was the fifth wheel, but maybe I could just leave. _No blood, no foul._ If I could talk to Edward first, maybe I could convince him that I could part ways with the Cullens amicably.

And maybe I could save the girl from damnation, too. I was living this existence, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish it on that girl whose only crimes were an inverted sense of danger and a simple country charm and a superlative scent that caught Edward's and Esmé's attentions.

With my new resolve, I returned to the Cullen house. Edward's Aston Marin was parked in the garage around back. I went in. Vampires don't need to knock. We can hear each other just fine from quite a distance, and besides, our scents are fingerprints. They knew I was here. And I knew Edward wasn't.

Hm.

Carlisle and Esmé were seated as before, and this time Carlisle spoke: "Ah, Rosalie! Edward went out looking for you; I guess you didn't come across him?"

His voice was pleasant, untroubled, unaware, but it was Esmé I was watching. She had a welcoming but disinterested look on her face that masked one of disappointment. A look that said: _why do you still exist?_ And I knew now my request for an amicable parting was too late; she had already _'spoke'_ to Edward, I was sure.

Oh, well. Oblivion it was, then. Farewell, cruel, brief eternal existence.

"No," I responded evenly. If I were to go, I would go with my dignity intact. "But it'll be easy enough for me to find him; I'll go collect him and come right back ..." ... or not, as the case may be.

Esmé smiled that motherly smile of hers. "Come back soon, Rosalie; we missed you."

I smiled at her wanly — keeping up the friendly appearances — and left, tracking Edward's scent.

It was all over the hunting grounds, and, with his speed, it would take forever to catch up to him. I did have forever, but why push off the inevitable?

I ran to "our rock"; the rock by which we had our last conversation about the girl, and called out in a clear voice that carried for miles, above the range that humans could hear. Rule number one, after all.

"Edward, I'm out by the rock. You know the one. I'll wait here." It was the perfect place for him to take me out: visibility was near zero with the clumping of the trees. All he had to do it come to me with me upwind, and that would be that. Even Edward could manage that.

I broadcast as clearly as I could my understanding that I was unwelcome in their family and that I was ready: I was ready to end this existence.

Edward came to me. _He_ was upwind. Maybe he was being gentlemanly? Letting me know my end was coming? He could have surprised me with his first blow, but I would know what was going on in the minutes he would take following that to destroy me.

I just hoped he would spare me the altruistic lecture.

He appeared right in front of me, almost too fast for even a vampire to track. "Rosalie," he began.

So much for getting spared the lecture.

"You're right," he continued.

And I waited. _'You're right'_ could mean many things in Edward's book, but it never actually meant 'you're right'.

"You're just not fitting in with the rest of the family — not because we're not trying, but because you're not ready yet — and I think you need some time on your own to figure out some things ... like I needed some time on my own."

I lashed out at that: "I am _NOT_ going to go on some homicidal rampage in order to 'figure things out'!" I spat these words out fiercely. I wasn't some all-powerful judge, sampling the wine as I executed judgment on it.

Edward held out his open palm facing me in a peace offering. I considered taking a bite out of it. "I didn't suggest that, and I didn't mean that. All I'm saying is that you wish to go. And I know it will break Esmé's heart ..." _Right!_ I couldn't help but scream in my mind. Edward grimaced, but continued: "... and she'll make a big scene. So, I'll convince Carlisle and Esmé that" — _as if you ever had any trouble convincing them of anything! _ — "since you've just hunted, you can watch the house while we're away on our outing. You can leave during the weekend with no fuss."

Edward maintained his cool during my spiteful interjections, and I was so distracted by my backbiting that I almost missed what he was saying. But then I did get it.

"You're going to let me walk away?" I couldn't believe it. Was this a trick? Why would Edward need to trick me? He had me right here!

"Yes," he responded calmly. But was it _yes_ to me walking away or _yes_ to this being a trick? "You can walk away," he clarified, "peaceably, but let me just say this."

_Oh, boy!_ I sighed to myself, _here it comes._

"You've got us wrong. You've got us all wrong. Carlisle not a tyrant, and Esmé loves you. We all do. You can walk away, and we won't follow you, but you'll always be welcome back. You'll be welcomed back with open arms."

Fine. Whatever. Edward always held onto his delusions. I wouldn't be able to sway him from any now.

Well, maybe I could sway him on just one point.

"What about the girl?" I asked.

"What about her?" he asked back. Edward was just so thick-headed sometimes.

"Don't turn her, Edward, please."

_"What!"_ Edward looked genuinely shocked. "Why in Heaven or on Earth would I ever do that to anyone?"

About the soul, Edward and I disagreed, but when it came to our curse ... he and I were actually in accord on this point. But I wasn't worried so much about him, in particular.

"Oh, I don't know. Appealing human girl ... Edward in need of a mate ... Edward showering attention on her ... Sound familiar?" Edward had shown up at functions my human family and I had attended. He and I had had passing conversations, with displeasure evident from both sides, but apparently not so evident for Esmé.

"Rosalie, I will never, _ever,_ allow that to happen. You have my word on that."

"Even if she's on the point of death, like I was?" I pressed.

"I'll make sure that she comes to no harm," he responded.

That was the wrong answer.

"Like you made sure for me?" I seethed, burning inside at the memory that plagued me again.

"I didn't do that for you," he responded sorrowfully, "and I regret that."

"No, Edward, you've got it wrong. You shouldn't regret not saving me: I should have died in that alley. But also, you shouldn't protect that girl. This is Ekalaka-waka, U.S.A." I said the town's name adding a sarcastic twist at the end. "The only danger that girl faces — _the only danger_ — is _us! Stay away from her, _Edward. Please. And have Carlisle and Esmé stay away, too."

Edward shook his head. "Rosalie, this is a funny time for you to start looking beyond yourself. Nothing is going to happen to her."

I sighed. I had done what I could. "Edward, this is a funny time for you to start looking beyond yourself ..." I repeated his words right back to him. "... especially for a _mortal."_ I avoided the whole 'she's not just a human' refrain from Mr. Stars-in-his-eyes. "Pick a nice vampire girl. Just make sure _this girl_ is still human when you find your _soul_ mate, okay?"

Edward smiled. "See, you _are_ family: you never give up."

I smiled back. He was right about part of it. "See: I never give up. I am _a Hale."_

Edward's smile didn't leave his face, but it became wistful. "I'll miss you, Rosalie. I never did have a sister. Leave, take all the time you need, but come home. I'll be the first one to welcome you back."

"Thank you, Edward." I wasn't saying _thank you_ in gratitude; no, I was saying that to close our conversation. We were done. It would be nice to be welcomed back to a family, if that family was sincere. It would be nice for Edward to welcome me back, because even though he was a blockhead, he still stood beside me through thick and thin, bickering with me every inch of the way.

It was just too bad he was blind in his conceits of family: his creator-father and his vampire mommy. Maybe he'd come to see the light one day, and we would cross paths again as brother and sister out on our own.

It was a pleasant fanciful thought, but also a pointless one. We ran back to the Cullen house, and I prepared to say goodbye to this part of my existence. I would never be seeing any of the Cullens again.

* * *

**A/N 1: **The Town of Ekalaka is "named after a Sioux Indian girl, wife of scout David Harrison Russell" (montanahistory-dot-net-slash-placenames). Rosalie's disparagement isn't directed toward the Sioux nation or that girl, it's directed at the whole world.

**A/N 2:** The books of philosophy are all, or if not all, for the most part, now in the public domain and are freely available to read on the web. Of course, I'd recommend the _Summa Theologica, _first, but it does require patience for the style of reasoning employed at that time by St. Thomas Aquinas (once you get the hang of it, reading it becomes very natural). The other books? Nietzsche's book is "Beyond Good and Evil", Kant's book is the "Critique of Pure Reason". Peirce's books are harder to find, as they are mostly stored in Harvard's archive, but there are critiques of his work and also web documents available. As for Wittgenstein ... ah, Wittgenstein! His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was my most pleasurable read of his corpus. Too bad (for whom?) he later disavowed it.


	13. The Soul: the Singer — III: Escape

**Section summary: **You really have to wonder at the impudence of the girl to come barging into what she knows is a vampires' house and then parade her detecting skills so brazenly. What did she think I would do? Pat her on the head?

* * *

It was the early morning pre-dawn hours when Edward and I returned to the house. The Cullens headed off in the Dodge sedan for their hunting trip. I waved good bye from the door then returned to my room. Now that I was going to be on my own, I had to consider what to pack.

What does a nomad vampire need in the wilds?

Nothing.

I sighed. This would be a very different phase of my lif ... existence that I would be entering. I went to my closet and looked at all the clothes that I would now not be needing any more. I selected one of my favorite dresses, put it on, and said good bye to my room as I mentally prepared myself to go.

But then, the morning brought its own surprise before I could go. The surprise was in the form of that unmistakably sweet scent atop that bag of equine blood. I rushed to the door, setting it ajar and turned back toward my room: if the Cullens wouldn't see reason about this girl, maybe I could _persuade_ her to keep her distance from our kind.

That was my intent. But then I heard her fervent whisper from outside the house.

"Okay, Bella, you can do this." _You can do what?_ "Just don't call her Rosalie."

She knew.

She knew everything.

My intent at persuasion just went out the window because now this was about Rule Number One.

Rule Number One. One rule, one result, no exceptions.

I returned to my bed, and I heard her call. As I answered the call of the soon to be dead girl, I heard the crinkle of several papers pressed against cloth. _Several papers?_ She had really done her homework, hadn't she?

She would enter my room, and that's when I would kill her.

This task fell entirely on me. There was no point in discussion or coming to a consensus with the Cullens. Discussion? I already knew how such a conversation would develop. I would tell them: "This girl knows we are vampires!" And Esmé would bring her hands to her cheeks: "Oh, my!" she would exclaim, and we would look to her, but then, she would prove she was a vampire after all, using the speed which she had hardly ever used, using a speed faster than thought, to leap upon the girl, piercing the jugular vein and the carotid artery with her teeth, forcing as much venom into the girl's system as possible. That venom would spread into the brain and down to the heart in less than two heartbeats, and, just for good measure, Esmé would probably puncture the girl's stomach, pulling out two small hands full of stomach lining, maybe even breaking the spine near the pelvis — enough damage to guarantee death, but not enough to kill the girl quickly. It would be impossible to drain the venom from the girl's system by the time Edward pulled Esmé off the girl, and anyway, with the damage the girl had received, she would _need_ that venom to heal the otherwise irreparably damaged organs.

How perfectly in line with Esmé's motherly Machiavellian schemings! Edward wouldn't forgive her for a time, but we are in eternity, after all. Esmé could wait. Eventually Edward and his new mate would return to the fold, and Esmé would get her way: one big happy vampire family. Even better, she wouldn't need to maintain a pretense at faux innocence, as she would for an ambush on the girl. In this case, Esmé was simply enforcing the rule that has no exceptions ... enforcing it _her_ way, that is.

If I presented the girl to the Cullens, I would be cursing her with a fate much, much worse than death ... for eternity. I wouldn't do that to me if this were my case, and my behavior in my human life so matched this eternal one I actually brought this on myself, in a way. She in no way behaved so coldly, so callously, so I wouldn't do this to her, and I wouldn't allow the Cullens to, either. I would take action on my own and kill her now that she chose to come here.

But then ... why did she come here in the first place? Edward had said that he told her the Cullens would be out. Why didn't her human instinctive reactions keep her away, far away, from me, knowing full well Edward would not be here to visit, would not be here to protect her. I had made feelings I had for her quite plain.

And there was the matter of the void that was her mind. She did think, she did see, she did observe ... so why was she inscrutable?

And her scent. Edward was always proclaiming she was something other than human, and my response: "Edward? Heartbeat? Respiration? Brainwave activity? Scent?" And his retort was always: "Yes, the scent: what other human _in the world_ has a scent even close to that?"

I had thought that she being his singer that the scent had stripped him of his reason. The way he acted around that girl ...

But now?

Now there were too many things coincidentally falling into place. And I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as random, or undirected, coincidence. Coindence: things that arose together, that is, in accord. How could she possibly be Edward's singer _and _have a mind inscrutable to his unique form of observation? How could she be so unobservant as to ignore every signal of danger we, well, that is, _I_ sent to her, yet have all the facts about us present themselves to her in utter frankness? How could she act in such an artless, selfless manner, yet have every door opened for her and every opportunity presented to her? It was if she were the opposite of a vampire: we went to our prey and took what was theirs making their essence our own, but, instead, she came to the predator, us, and she freely gave herself ... but somehow, in her giving, we, the predator, became subjected to her.

Edward, Esmé ... even Carlisle: they were entirely in her thrall.

There _was_ something different about her. Something _entirely_ Other about her. I would find out what this was.

_Then_ I would kill her. Human or no, rule number one still applies. No exceptions.

We had our little conversation; a conversation which purpose was only to seal her doom. Yes, she unwittingly called me _Rosalie_ in her fury. _Fury._ The girl's fury was comparable to that of a kitten attacking a panther. Very cute ... for a dead girl.

I sent her off to make tea, and, again, not one single detail of our existence escaped her. I smelled the saltiness in the air when she opened the unused ice box. Imagine that: she was crying over our inability to eat human food.

Totally Other.

I prepared myself for the coming ordeal with her horse: I would be carrying her a great distance. It wouldn't be much of a conversation if I drained her in the first hour. As I satiated myself with her mount, she looked on. Again, everything showing itself to her.

I subdued her quickly and took the notes from her back pocket and examined them: Royce, dead, me, dead, me, engaged — it pleased me that as a human I was still quite beautiful — and Dr. C. _Cullen's_ name circled on the University of Rochester's faculty roster. Guilty, as charged.

Well. There it is. I left her notes in the opened medical journal Carlisle was reading and filed it back in his shelf. My farewell letter that no human would know how to find, but, with my scent and hers emanating from the bookshelf, no vampire could miss. I then took her and her mount several miles from the Cullens house and left an unmistakable and plausible alibi: a bear attack.

Nothing enrages a bear more than to take away one of her cubs. It was a simple exercise to drop the girl, move the cub twenty feet away, and when the adult charged me, to throw the corpse of the horse, with some of the girl's shredded clothes, at the bear, distracting it long enough for me to make my get away with this 'not-human' mortal.

_Poor Bella Swan!_ The humans would exclaim, _out in the woods with her horse only to get mauled by a bear!_

Yes, indeed, poor_ dead _Bella Swan. This girl, now freed of her name, that I now had, would have considered herself lucky if I had thrown _her_ at the bear instead of her horse. But I had things to discover about her first. Besides, _she_ called this down upon herself. Visiting _me_ unescorted as she did. _What_ was she thinking! I was determined to find out.


	14. The Soul: the Singer — IV: Lust

**Section Summary:** You know, I'd rather not summarize my thoughts here. All the girl did was lay there, dying, and all I did while I tried to save her was to become a more wretched and despicable monster with each passing second. "No Summary" just sounds better.

**WARNING! **The chapter title is accurate and appropriate, meaning this reading material is _not_ appropriate for work. NSFW!

* * *

Reflecting on our meeting that led to the girl's capture, I had see that she was entirely different, totally Other, and I resolved to find out what it was about her that made her different than every other human in the world. It was with that resolve that I returned to the cabin after my hunts: one expedition for myself, and one for her: I was loaded down with the foodstuffs the girl had requested to keep her alive.

Keeping her alive seemed to be today's challenge, because as I approached the door, I heard a heart rate at thirty-three beats per minute, _and slowing,_ and no sound of respiration.

I sighed: another 'ordinary' day in an extraordinary way. I shook my head ruefully and called out: "Honey, I'm home!" to keep up appearances, and opened the door to see how she would 'greet' me.

I looked into the cabin, and did not believe my perfect vampire eyes.

There she was on the floor by the bed, curled up into a ball, with her sheet noose-like around her neck, curving down her back, and then wrapped tightly between her legs.

She couldn't have attempted to strangle herself this well if she had planned this all herself. And I wondered, for an instant, if she actually did plan this, but, of course, this was a ridiculous thought: she didn't have the strength earlier to lift her hand off the bed. Executing herself thus required much more strength than what she had in her body at present.

Another coincidental dance with Death.

It's rather hard to kill oneself if one is just recovering from a near-death experience. I admired her tenacity.

Once again, as Death was too busy at the moment harvesting with the animals I killed, she went out to meet Death, giving herself to him. Nicely gift wrapped, too. Well, I took care of that problem — _it was Christmas early,_ so I unwrapped my own little lavender and freesia present. The strangling sheet that 'wrapped' the girl ended up in shredded pieces by the stove.

Not even a second had yet passed since I opened the door. I looked down at the girl whose heart was still slowing (twenty-seven beats per minute now) who still was not breathing, and I moved quickly. I lifted her up onto the bed, tilted her head back to provide a clear airway and steeled myself.

Then I did the most dangerous thing in the world: I sucked in a breath of air ... a breath of _her._

Everything turned red, my depth perception just went away, and the only way I could distinguish shapes any more was by the shading of red.

No, that's not right. One thing was pure white. On the bed.

_It._

The blood ... the precious, sweet, delic ... No. Not it.

_Her._

That appealing blood, that tempting blood, was housed in the girl that I needed to save. _I do need to save her, _I reminded myself.

I crawled into the bed and placed myself on top of her. My lips pressed to hers, not to kiss, but to open them to receive the life-restoring air. My tongue entered her mouth, not to entwine with hers as a lover's, but to depress it. I pushed the air that was in the cavities that used to be my lungs into her, manually inflating her empty lungs.

I withdrew my tongue from her mouth, tasting her sweetness, swallowing her saliva, feeling it slide down my throat and enter _me._

I pushed my body against hers, forcing her lungs to compress, expelling the air from her as I breathed in her next breath, as I breathed in the air that had just been in _her._

She went from pure white to a blazing beacon, a blinding comet in the night sky.

But, ... wait a minute.

Why did she not die just now? Are you not asking yourself that question? You should be, for as I tasted her, she was surely tasting me. There was no way to stop some venom leaking from my mouth, from my tongue, into her pretty little mouth.

My venom was now inside her. Why was it not killing her? Why was it not rendering her cells inert? Why was it not spreading through her mortal body, destroying it?

I had asked myself this question already, for I had to do this when I resurrected her from her ill-advised swim in the Belle Fourche. I have a theory, but that's all it is: a theory. Vampires drink blood to continue to exist, yes?

No. Marcus hasn't drunk blood in fifteen hundred years. We are immortals, after all. But the negation is deeper than this. Vampires consume blood, yes, but we consume blood for what it carries, not for what it is.

What does blood carry? Blood carries Life. Vampires don't drink blood: vampires drink Life.

The rôle of blood is to carry life, and the rôle of the venom is to render it inert, that is: to end it, to destroy it. How about the saliva in the mouth of this girl — this _still_ not breathing girl? What does saliva do? Saliva, mucus, whatever: it coats and lubricates the orifices that provide entranceways to that Life. These things provide a barrier to the outside world, _protecting_ that Life. Venom takes life; mucus protects it, and when they meet?

When they meet, they seem to neutralize each other. I felt it on my tongue; I felt it in her mouth: the two opposed fluids meeting, binding to each other. Then, when I swallowed her saliva, I got her _taste, _yes ... _o! the perfection of it!_ But I also felt the balm of it, the utter soothing feel of it as it slid down my throat. It was like nothing that I swallowed before.

Venom, of course, burned its way down my throat: trying to destroy the indestructible. Blood, _ah, blood,_ was a fiery, peppery, _lively_ champagne, energizing everything it touched. But the saliva-venom mixture was like an anesthetic, numbing, but not with that bitterness of anesthetic, it was a salve, _healing_ what it touched.

Not healing me, of course ... but did it heal the girl? This still not breathing girl ... _oops!_

I pushed the next breath into her, ...

... and that's when everything went to Hell.

I got that feeling that I had only once before, the first time I had fed as a newborn: _a vampire! Here!_

I have told you that Carlisle handed me my first kill. I didn't tell you how I reacted, so I will tell you now: I crouched over the prey and growled at the three other predators in that forest park outside of Rochester: _stay away! Mine!_ Carlisle, Esmé and Edward, my three competitors for my first meal, had to back off a good mile before I lowered my mouth to the neck of my first victim.

Vampires are _not_ about sharing, and, when feeding, the primal instincts kick in. _Attack! Defend! Kill! Survive! Drink!_ They were no longer beings that I knew, they were rivals, and I would destroy them if they approached me, or if they tried to take _my meal._ It is at the meal, after all, when concentration is divided between drinking and everything else. It is then when the vampire is most vulnerable.

It is then when we are most easily attacked.

It is then when we are most dangerous.

And it was now, with me pressed against the girl, appearing as if I was feeding off her, that this vampire chose to attack. I growled a warning in the low subsonic register — _stay away! Mine! _— as I pushed the last bit of air into her inflated lungs. There was a vampire in this room, and as I pulled my tongue from her mouth and my lips off hers, I coiled to spring as I pressed against her chest, pushing the air back out of her lungs, continuing her artificial respiration as I prepared to shred my rival.

Who wasn't here.

_What?_ My vision was marred by the bloodlust that I barely contained, so I clucked my tongue. The returning vibrations from the sound confirmed it: the shape of the cabin was as it was before, there was no other vampire in here.

I didn't have time to ponder this æthereal danger, so I breathed in the next breath of _her_ to fill her lungs again and pressed my lips to hers, flattening her tongue with mine, and felt the presence again, and as I pushed the air into her I realized what the presence was.

The other vampire was _me._

I had been fighting against the bloodlust, I had resisted the change to make me love her, but now there was a new monster in the room.

I _wanted her._

My cold lips pressed against her soft lips were not kissing her. My tongue was not entwined with hers. My breasts were interlocked with hers, but not in an embrace. My arms encircled her, cradling her, but only to keep her head back, to keep the airway open. My legs, one outside her legs, the other in between, were so positioned for the sole reason of keeping the full weight of me from crushing her.

But I felt everything. And I wanted it all. I _wanted her._

It was now that I became aware of a part of my body that manufactured quite a bit more venom than what my mouth emitted. For the first time in my life ... well, in this new existence, that is ... I felt the venom lubricate my vagina, preparing me. Preparing me for intercourse. And, at the same time, I became aware of a new message that my scent could broadcast, because it was broadcasting it now. The message?

_I want her right now._

This was so unfair.

Seriously. The bloodlust was to the point now that I had to exert nearly all my strength to keep it in check. The rest of me was making sure I did not fall in love with the little princess in constant need of rescuing. But _this?_

This _want_ could not be argued against; it could not be reasoned with. It could only be stopped if I concentrated with every fiber of my being against it. If I didn't fight it, then I would take her right here and right now. I would get her breathing again in the next few seconds, and then I would take her.

And I knew exactly how I would take her: I wouldn't rape her, as Royce had raped me.

No: I would make _her _beg_ me_ to take her.

It would be so simple. The blood rushed to pleasured areas, to excited areas: this is what caused the blush, this is what caused the clitoris and the labia to become aroused and engorged, as the venom was now doing for me right now, this is what caused the excited areas to tingle. Every sense of mine was attuned to the rushing of the blood, so I would simply follow the blood to cue me to her needs, to attune me to her wants, and it would take me minutes, less even, of soft caresses, of tender strokes, of smoldering looks, of intimate embraces, ... of all these actions to raise her to that level of excitement and arousal, to bring her past the point that she would care about resisting anymore.

Period or no, I would make her beg me to take her. I would massage away the pain of the menstrual cramps. And then, if I did not fight this desire right now, I would take her: I would take her slowly the first time, reveling in her sounds of want and desire and of frustration as I teased her with my caresses that withheld as much as they gave and then ultimately of pleasure that she would be unable to suppress.

... then I would press myself on her, pressing her into the bed, and the swollen petals of her little flower would open to me, and I would feel her softness, and her sweetness, and her wetness, but she would not be able to move, as much as she tried to satisfy her desire; she would be that completely in my control. Then I would wait until she was reduced to begging, again: _"please! please!"_ she would beg. That's when I would take her forcefully, with firm, but gentle — always gentle — strokes: slowly and firmly, making sure she knew that _I_ was in control, that, in her ecstasy, every single feeling of pleasure came from _me,_

... then I would keep taking her until she slipped into an exhausted sleep,

... and then.

And then I would take her ever so gently as she slept, making sure her dreams were filled with me. _Only me._ Making sure that the only word she spoke in her sleep would be _my name. _And not my full name, 'Rosalie'; no, instead it would be the name she had called out to me in her dream. She would call it out in her new dreams that I would supply the reasons for. Gasp out my name, again and again.

_Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose!_

And while doing that she would have her head thrown back, pressed into her pillow, exposing her creamy white skin of her lovely swan-like neck, and her eyes would be tightly shut. Just the image of the girl so enraptured enraptured me: her, calling my name thus.

Well, I suppose I would allow her maybe one or two other words, like: _more!_ or _harder!_ or _there! _or _yesssss! _She _would be_ asleep through the night, but she would get no rest.

I would take her, and she would be mine. Entirely mine.

But ...

When I had taken her, though, taken her so completely as this, wouldn't I have destroyed her only chance at Heaven? Wouldn't I have ruined my only opportunity at being able to complete a redemptive act?

If I were thinking, these questions would have meant something to me, but I wasn't thinking. The monster inside me was snarling so loudly that any thought was impossible, and it was snarling these inarticulate and demanding words: _No! Mine! Now! RIGHT NOW!_

Yes, right now, I couldn't reason; I couldn't think. I could only fight against this _want _with every fiber of my being. But here's why this was unfair: I had been successful in struggling against the two completely opposed wants of the bloodlust and pure love up to this point, but now? Now with this third _want,_ this _want_ so strong that I had to throw my entire being at it to stop it, I knew tonight I would lose to at least one of them. I would lose, then she would lose: any time an immortal's affairs becomes entangled with a mortal's, the mortal loses.

But what else could I do? I _had_ to fight against this urgency; I _had_ to hope that I could beat down the other two as they strove to force me to do the unthinkable: to drink her blood or to love her. I am not a creature driven by wants and lusts. I am not a monster. I am strong enough to beat any and all foes standing against me. I am a Hale.

And all three did stand against me. All at the same time. All right now. And my encircling arms? I did not know whether they held her to expose her neck for my teeth to shift just a couple of inched to drain her life into me, or if they held her so that I could take her slowly and demandingly in an amorous embrace, or if they held her because I wanted her to live, because I wanted to care for her, because I wanted to protect her, because I wanted to love her, and to be loved by her in return.

But I fought, with all my might, against all these things, for me. For her. I fought.

And the air that I had just filled her lungs escaped as I pressed against her, and I breathed _her _in to give her her next breath, ...

... and I lost.

I lost the fight utterly and completely.


	15. The Soul: the Singer — V: Bloodlust

**Section Summary:** How had Edward done it? The call of the girl's blood was so strong — so strong — that if I didn't find a way to fight it, she would be drained and dead this very moment. He resisted her song somehow. How had Edward done it?

**WARNING!** Contains a graphic depiction of the final death of a main character, the graphic depiction of the death of several other people, and then allusions to the deaths of several thousand other people.

* * *

As I breathed in the next breath of air to give to this still-not-breathing girl, I breathed in _her. _And, as I breathed in _her,_ fighting with all my might against the three-fold desires warring within me to take her, _she_ became too much. Too, too much, and I lost the battle; I lost the war; I lost everything. I lost.

I lost the fight utterly, tasting the bitterness of defeat in my mouth that a Hale would never taste. _I failed,_ and in that failure, I felt my _self_ slipping away in defeat.

Her whiteness, her brightness: it now completely filled the room, and all I could see was that. Everything faded away into it: I was completely surrounded by undifferentiated whiteness.

And my bloodlust for her? It doubled. Then it doubled again. Then it doubled again.

_Oh, God, no!_

Then it doubled again.

_I can't ... I can't ..._

A Hale _never_ says "I can't" to _anything_.

Then it doubled again. I now needed her more than _one hundred sixty_ _times_ _more_ than I had ever wanted any human's blood.

And I couldn't resist any more. It didn't matter anymore that I was Hale. I was nothing. I was nothing but _vampire,_ and I couldn't resist the call of her blood.

She had just become my singer.

But there was no more _she_ now. There was simply me and my blood, my life. There it was right beneath me, waiting for me to take it. Without it, I was empty and lifeless. But when I took it into me, I would, for the first time in over a year, be _truly alive._ I would feel the warmth of blood flowing in me again, real blood, not that poor and weak substitute of animal blood that I had barely subsisted on for a year now, but _my blood in me _— _again!_ — after a year of its lack.

For the first time ever, in this new life, I would be able to blush.

And I would be complete. I now realized I had been only half of what I _needed _to be. I must have that lavender and freesia scent to complete the honeysuckle and rose scent. Both needed each other.

And I needed it. _Now! Right now!_

_No._

Not right now. I had one more breath in me. And in this whiteness was the girl who was still not breathing under her own power, and her heart rate — _o! that glorious, living heartbeat!_ — had increased to forty-two beats per minute. I would push this one breath into her and hope and pray that she would start breathing again on her own after this breath, for I knew that if I took another sip of air with the scent of her blood, with the scent _of her,_ in it, I would lose all control.

In the whiteness, I went to _me_, I went to _my life_, and pressed my lips against its lips and slipped my tongue into its beautiful mouth and breathed the life-giving air into it ... into her.

But then I must have lost my sense of hearing, because I heard the siren's call, calling to me, calling me to it ... to her:

"Rosalie!"

And then I must have lost my sense of touch, because I felt white hot brands, soft white hot brands that did not burn me but instead encircle me in a delicate embrace, filling me with warmth.

And I heard the heartbeat back up to seventy-three beats per minute, singing to me and for me — _drink-me, drink-me, drink-me _— pulling me in.

So I, somehow, impossibly, resisted those calls and acted on hope. I hoped that it was not the call of the singer, but it was actually the girl doing these things, and I extricated myself from her in the pure whiteness, and I stopped my breath, and I threw myself back to where the far wall of the cabin was, that is, if I could have seen it, and stopped when I felt the touch of wood against my fingertips.

And I hoped that the girl would act prudently, and stay on the bed, that is: stay away from this ravenous, unstoppable monster that I had become.

But the siren's call had become too strong, for now the call was telling me exactly what I needed to hear:

"Rosalie, it's okay; I don't care! You can take me. Take my blood!"

_Ah, yes! The blood! My blood! Life! My life!_

The singer continued to weave its song, to cast its nets, to pull me into it. And I could do nothing but obey its call. I felt my center of gravity sink as I prepared to slink into my predatory crouch, and, as I could not see anymore, I rapidly shook my head from side to side to triangulate the exact position of the blood that would be in me. My blood.

No. Her blood.

But it didn't matter whose blood it was anymore, for, in a few seconds, it would start to be in me, and in under three minutes I would have consumed it all.

Unless I could resist the call. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. I needed help, I couldn't do this on my own, and the girl, instead of helping me was actively calling me to her doom.

I needed help, and I looked for it in the most unlikely of places: Edward.

The girl's call to Edward was more than six times stronger than the irresistible call of her call to me, but still he resisted. _How?_

I recalled our conversation after the girl's first visit to our house — _to my room _— when I had measured the seriousness of the girl's pull on Edward.

"But, Edward, how do you resist that? How _can_ you?" I had asked him, filled with curiosity, and, although I wouldn't tell him nor even think it, filled with grudging admiration for him.

Edward looked to me helplessly and shrugged: "I don't know," was his sad reply.

So much for help from my _dear brother._ This was it: the girl would now die. I launched myself at the now coughing thing — her coughing would soon be over — and, as I launched myself I gave myself over to the bloodlust completely, envisioning the perfection of what was about to happen.

...

I would tilt her head back, gently. Gently, so as not to break the neck.

And I would sink my teeth into that soft neck, and, as her coughing was replaced by a scream, I would suck.

And the life would begin to fill me.

And it would be ... it would be _wonderful! _It would nothing like I've tasted, nothing like I've felt, nothing like I've ever experienced. I would feel life. I would feel it as a vampire feels it: fully, completely, directly ... beautifully.

And she would be screaming as the venom began to work its way into her bloodstream and spread like wildfire, so I could not remove my lips and teeth from neck to comfort her, because I needed every single drop of that uncorrupted life-carrying blood that I could syphon from her before it became tainted with the venom, so I would cover her mouth to soften the screams.

And then, after a minute her screams would turn to whimpers. _See, it doesn't hurt as much anymore, does it? _Again, I couldn't ask her this out loud, because now I would need to suck much harder as the blood pressure decreased along with the heart rate.

And, after another minute, her feeble struggling would cease, and she would whisper: _"I feel cold."_ She was always saying silly things like this. How could she feel cold with the fire in the stove heating the cabin so? But this was okay. Just one more minute, and I would cover her in the blanket.

Just one more minute.

_There. _And then she would shake a little. Hm. I guess she was cold after all.

Then I would press against her, as much as I could to pump that last little bit of life into me without crushing her entirely. And _then_ I would cover her in the blanket.

Because then I would be finished.

"There, see? Nice and warm now, yes?" And she would look at me with blank and empty eyes, so I would nod her head for her.

"Do you have any more blood for me?" Her blood was _so good!_ And I was floating in the euphoria of being filled with it, but I could have a little bit more if she had more to give.

I would shake her head in response. "No? No more blood? That's okay. You gave me everything you could give me?" Here I would nod her head.

"Oh, that's so sweet of you!" and so in line with her giving nature. "Thank you! Thank you _so much!_ Now, sweetie, you need to rest. After all, you need to recover from nearly strangling yourself just now, right, you silly girl?" And I would nod her still head for her again, but she wouldn't close her eyes.

She was always a little rebellious like this. It was one of her endearing traits.

So I would close her eyes for her, and I would watch her through the night, so filled with contentment, and life, and gratitude to this little slip of a girl who had given me this wonderful gift so freely and tenderly.

And the sun would rise, but I guess she was sleepy, because she wouldn't open her eyes. So I would slip out of the bed and prepare her breakfast as she slept. _Breakfast in bed!_ And I would shake her gently, offering breakfast, but I guess she was really sleepy.

So I would slip back into the bed with her, and feel the warmth of her. She was always so warm — almost hot! — but now she was more moderate in her warmth. She was now room temperature.

"You don't want breakfast now? That's okay, honey; I'll fix you something later when you do wake up."

And I would be filled with life and love and happiness. And I would be glowing, and I would watch her sleeping though the day and see how lovely she was, how beautiful, how the kindness of her pervaded every line of her perfect, restful, sleeping face.

And I would watch her as she slept throughout that next night, just watching her.

But then, the next morning, she still wouldn't wake up.

"You know, girl," as I presented another breakfast that she refused again, petulant in her sleep, "I worked very hard to get you these things that _you_ asked for — and here you are refusing to eat — you should really eat something to stay healthy, shouldn't you?"

But she wouldn't respond. She wasn't responding, but she was doing something: she had replaced her beautiful and intoxicating scent with the slight stench of decay. I wouldn't like this choice of hers.

It was about now that her blood, that is, _my_ blood, was starting to be integrated and absorbed into my being. It was about now that I would be coming down from the euphoria.

"Don't you have to go to the outhouse?"

No answer.

"Well, I'll take you there, and you can decide then, okay?"

And I would carry her to the outhouse, but she would refuse to sit down. Instead she would stand there, rather stiffly, I might add.

"You know, you never did give me your name."

But then I would realize that she did have a name: _dead._ That was her new name. _Dead._

"Hm. That's not a very interesting name. What? Do you expect me to call you _'dead' _during our conversation? That doesn't seem a very attractive way to address you."

But she would stand by her silly name. So strong. So resolved. So principled.

So headstrong. So stubborn.

"Well, are you going to go?"

Nothing.

"Do you want to go back to the cabin now?"

Still nothing.

_"Answer me!"_

Where had her fight gone? Where was her feistiness?

"Look, this is your fault, you know. _You_ told me to take your blood. I simply did what you asked me to do. You can't argue this point with me. You _did_ ask me to do it. Admit it."

She would just stand there: not arguing with me, but also not admitting her guilt in the matter either.

_"DAMN YOU! THIS IS YOUR FAULT! SAY IT!"_

But my outburst wouldn't startle her, as it always had before.

"Just, please," I was reduced by her silence to begging, _"please, _tell me you are trying to get into Heaven. Please?" That's the only hope I had. She had to do this for me at the very least. I had determined that I would be the one to kill her, as noone else would do this necessary task, but I hoped that her purity would be enough to take her to Heaven. That, even though I killed her, I had protected her soul enough on Earth so that she had a chance at Heaven.

My one good act. My only one good act in my entire existence. She had to do this for me, because there would be nothing, now, to pin my hopes on ever again.

Her silence in reply was neither comforting nor accusing. But it was something that I didn't expect it to be ... or not to be: it was void of hope in its lifelessness. It _was_ hopeless. And I so depended on her for hope. Where could I get my hope if not from her anymore?

But then I would realize that maybe the first name I had thought for her was the correct name. Maybe she was Persephone, after all.

_O! What a relief!_ To be sure: she was dead now, but in six months she would return from Hel — _not Hell!_ — and _then_ we could have our conversation. _Then_ everything would be fine. With this realization, I would race her to the nearest glacier rock deposit. I would dig twenty feet through solid bedrock and make a small chamber for her in it. Then I would place her in there and tell her I would return in six month to collect her from that old grouch Hades. Then I would seal off the chamber, entombing her until she returned from the Underworld.

Six month later, I would return. Starved. After having her, I couldn't touch that now undrinkable animal blood again, no matter how hard I tried. And humans? I stayed away from them all, waiting for her. Waiting for Persephone to return. Waiting for _my_ Persephone to return.

And I would burst through to the tomb, not bothering to roll the stone aside.

And the stench would hit me.

_No!_

And I would rush to her side and see the decomposition.

No. She _had _to come back. She was Persephone. That was her name. _That had to be her name! _ She was given six months each year here in this world.

Well, if Hades wouldn't let her come back, then _I_ would bring her back.

"Look. I'm sorry. I don't want your blood anymore. Take it back."

She would just lie there. Her long, long hair cascading about her gaunt figure.

Because I would have absorbed all her blood by that time. I couldn't give back her blood to her. I am a vampire: I can only take; I cannot give. I cannot give back what I've taken.

I couldn't give back, but there were others who had blood to give.

"Wait here, Persephone. I'll get your blood back to you. Just wait here, okay? Don't move. Don't leave."

And I would rush off, and I would grab the nearest family and bring them to her: each would give all the blood they could give to her, about forty percent of their blood, and they would restore her life to her with their own. I could just picture them: a mother, a father, and an adolescent girl. And they would be screaming and confused, and I would rip the mother and the father right over Persephone and let their blood rain down on her. And the adolescent girl would be screaming at me and asking me why I had killed her parents, and I would rip her right in half over Persephone as I shouted at her:

"You don't understand! This is Persephone! I need her back. I need her back right now!"

But she wouldn't come back.

Her name _wasn't_ Persephone, after all.

Maybe this body was too far gone? Maybe she was in another body now?

"I'll find you," I would say to her, "I promise." Vampires don't promise, because the future always rendered the promise made in the Now an impossibility. But I would promise. For her.

And I would look for her. And, being among the humans, their scents would drive me _mad, _drive me _to drink._ And I would drink, but not every two weeks.

No. _Every day._

I would drink that plain, ordinary human blood in my quest to find _her_. And I would cross the globe, and I would go from city to city, town to town, _drinking,_ looking for _her._

And thousands would die under my undying thirst. And I would still not find her. And still I would look.

Until, decades later, I would meet _him_. It would be another singer. For me. And I would rush right up to him and drain him, right in broad daylight, right in the middle of some town square, and he would be empty and limp in my arms, and people would be shouting and screaming. And I would feel _empty._

And I would return to this very place, recklessly killing all that crossed my path. And I would go to the now empty chamber and talk to her.

"He didn't even put up much of a fight. And, when I drained him of his life, what did I get for it? _Nothing!_ Where is that life you gave me? Where is that well-being? Where is the happiness and contentment? Why did you have to be the only one?"

And I would say it:

"I miss you, you know."

And I would, not because I loved her, or anything like that. But I would miss her conversations, her silly misunderstandings, her entirely misplaced kindness.

"See: I was right, and you were wrong. I'm not kind, as you thought: I _am_ a monster."

A dead monster, because I would sense them outside the tomb.

Them. The Volturi.

They would be waiting outside the tomb for me. Drain a human out in the open like I had just done and word would reach them, and they would act quickly.

I would call out to them: "I want it to be here." I would want to be destroyed right here, right beside where decades ago I had lain the girl that had been my undoing from the first second I saw her, the girl I could not do without from the second I drained her. I wanted to be beside her now, for eternity, and for the oblivion that was now walking to meet me here in this chamber.

...

And as I completed my leap to destroy the coughing girl, the vision I had gave me the realization of how Edward was able to resist her call, of how _I_ _could_ resist it. Right now, in my arms was a being, a living being, a coughing, frail being that would give me _life, true life_, but only for a day or two, but then what?

Without her, I would have bleakness, loss, the abyss of nothingness, oblivion. Sadness.

With her, I would have this constant struggle against my lusts, but I wouldn't have a boring moment, and that was no inconsiderable thing in eternity. I would have to deal with her warped image of herself and of me, but I could correct those. With her, I would have sadness, too, but I would have her silly voice making her silly pronouncements that would make me laugh even as the bloodlust made me ravenous.

And although this bloodlust that had launched me at her did not diminish an iota, and although I held_ my singer_ in my arms and her call was inescapable, or so I had thought, my arms neither crushed her nor tilted her head back, but instead held her in a gentle (for me) embrace and held her delicate frame together against her coughing that tried to rip her apart. And after her coughing subsided, I held onto her for a full minute afterward, just to make sure she didn't rip herself apart, yes, but just to reassure me, too.

She is still here. She is still alive. I hadn't killed her. I hadn't drained her of her blood.

I am a monster, yes. I still _wanted_ her — I wanted her blood, and I wanted her body — but my will was stronger than my want. I am a monster, yes, but I am a Hale, after all, and I had prevailed.


	16. The Soul: the Singer — VI: Why?

**Section Summary:** As if I care about what my venom can or can't do. I only care about one thing, okay? Me. Rosalie Lillian Hale. I don't need anything other than that. I don't need her, either. So leave me the Hell alone, okay? ... _please?_

**WARNING!** Contains a NSFW scene of ... um, what do you call it when ... well, it isn't really self-gratification if the other party participates, even unconsciously, right? And it isn't intercourse if there isn't actually ... well, you get the idea by now.

* * *

I had done it.

Or, actually, to be perfectly accurate, I _hadn't_ done it. I hadn't killed this girl, again. But this time this not-killing was so much more important because somehow, inexplicably, she had become my singer. I thought one was a singer or one wasn't. Well, that described this girl perfectly, didn't it: she wasn't my singer, and, now, she is. And I hadn't killed her. I had resisted that irresistible siren's song.

I had done it.

Well, I had done it this time, anyway. The victory of a vampire is always a short-lived one. The next time was always there. The next test was always waiting. And, if there were any guarantees in this eternity at all, it was this: the next test was sure to be a harder one.

So I did what any vampire would do. I celebrated this victory now, and I kept my head, and I kept my eye on the ball.

And priority one, as always, was this: now that I had been so successful in not killing the girl after I had just saved her, I needed to tend to her.

But first I needed to find something out. Had that serum of my venom and her saliva healed her? Was that simply an idealized illusion I had created from _her sweet taste?_ I had her open her mouth. Then I steadied myself and looked in.

Of course the call was terrible: the rawness of her throat brought the blood out of the capillaries so, so close to the membrane. So, so close to me.

But then I looked past that and saw a miracle. Her throat was raw, yes, but the constriction? The swelling? She had just strangled herself, so there should be signs of internal damage. There were signs of remnants, but actual damage? Gone. The muscles, too, were not tensed by the pain of her recent experience, but were relaxed, that is: relaxed as much as they could be in the presence of all that rawness still present in her throat. They were relaxed, so relaxed, in fact, that they appeared anesthetized. Numbed.

A miracle.

I now had a piece of knowledge unique in the world. I was sure that no vampire had ever mixed venom with human mucus: a vampire-human interaction, up to now, usually lasted all of three minutes, that interaction being exsanguination. And, of course, no human had their own vampire experimentation farm to discover this new fact.

But more important than having a new piece of knowledge, I now had something useful. I now could do something for this girl. As long as her blood was not flowing and exposed to the traces of venom not neutralized by her mucus, I, that is, _we_ could manufacture this anesthetic to ease muscle fatigue, reduce inflammation, and perhaps actually ... mend damaged tissue? The last thought couldn't be considered a conclusion, but it would be something to watch.

Instead of standing by, uselessly watching her writhe in pain, I could actually ease her agony to a degree.

This would be something to watch, some new piece of useful knowledge, but never something to tell. Wouldn't that just be perfect? An announcement of the new 'snake oil' that actually worked. And what was needed to make this salve? Well, see, you take one vampire, see, and ...

Wouldn't that just grab the world's attention? That would just bring the Volturi down on the epicenter, that is: here, like ten tons of ... well ... vampire, now, wouldn't it?

So, not something to share with the world, but something I could share with this girl and her unconstricted but still raw throat. I was tempted to mingle my venom with her saliva again to see if the rawness of her throat would reduce visibly. But I didn't do this.

I didn't do this for two reasons: firstly, her throat was in such a delicate state that another coughing fit would possibly rupture her very thin epidermal membrane in some places. Blood would flow, and was the venom _completely _neutralized? It seemed so, but if it wasn't? I wasn't in the mood to experiment.

Besides, for our kind of vampire — all four of us — we had our own special rule: the rule of abstinence. Or, put another way, the Cullens' first rule: _Don't be curious._ After all, curiosity killed the cat, but in our case, the case of us immortals, _our_ curiosity kills _any and all_ mortals, those being cats or not. Any experiment an immortal conducts on a mortal eventually fails, and every failure of an immortal is recoverable, but not for the mortal.

The second reason why I didn't do this was that the mistaken impression it would give to the now awake girl. _Oh! Please don't mind me while I give you a big, wet, sloppy, open-mouthed kiss as I stick my tongue down your throat. I just want to taste you ... no! that's not it! What I meant to say is I just want to see if my venom with your saliva magically heals you like I think it does. No, really! I'm being serious here._

Yes, that 'non-kiss' would be so easy to explain in that way, wouldn't it? Explain if I could talk; talk without killing her, that is. And, given the girl's infatuation and my little 'non-kissing' experiment, what would her reaction be? Her reaction, that is, after her initial shock that: no, my assault was not to drain her life from her. What if her reaction was to return the kiss that I was not giving her? What if her reaction was to return that kiss whilst wrapping me as tightly to her as she could in her sweet, soft arms again as she had just attempted at her revival?

And what would my reaction to her reaction be?

... Yes.

There would be more hot water than what was boiling in the pot on the stove, ... and I would be swimming in it.

So it would be best to hold off on experimenting with the properties of this new salve that I had been discovering.

No experiments, then, but I really did need to get rid of that God damned tee shirt of hers right now.

Because why?

Because I hated it. Soaked through with her sweat — her glorious and delicious sweat which I had just all too recently tasted in the air — it revealed every single beautiful feature of hers, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. Why did it get to caress her — every inch of her skin, her neck, her collarbone, her small, perfectly-shaped breasts, her erect nipples the size and shape of pomegranate seeds — _o! my sweet little Persephone! _— her chest, her flat stomach — so, so intimately, so, so directly, when I had to strain against my every desire to do so?

It was deliberately flaunting its lewd embrace with her as it revealed every single secret of hers ... secrets that were not meant for me to know.

Well, not _every last_ _one_ of her secrets ...

I retrieved a new undershirt for her, warned her, and then shredded that mocking tee and threw it to the stove where I would consign it to the flames. I could not wait to hear its wailing and gnashing of teeth when I burned it.

I did wish to check her to see if I accidently scratched her, but then ... something happened.

She looked to me.

She looked to me with those wide-open, honest, innocent, _pleading_ eyes, and with that look, she gave me her soul. _I entrust myself to you _is what her eyes told me.

She knew my look would be more than a look. And now I had to admit that I was lying to myself. I didn't wish to check her for injuries, not at all; no: _I_ _wanted_ _to look._ I wanted to see every part of her beautiful body and caress each and every inch with my eyes.

Caress her with my eyes, and then ...

But now, with her soul and her trust in my hands, I could do no such thing. She had entrusted herself to me completely, and now, I could _never_ betray that trust. I could only lock my eyes with hers and put on her new tee.

_God damn it._

Of course, you do know the peripheral vision of most predators is excellent ... you did know this fact, yes? So, let me allow that although her now shredded tee revealed her secrets, it did no justice to them.

She is so very, very beautiful. Every single part of her ... and I _so wanted all_ of that beauty for myself.

As her pad was full to overflowing, I removed that, too, but my action surprised her into a new fit of coughs that required I hold her together. I couldn't help but notice that as my encircling arms caged her, the vibrations of her coughing rubbed her now exposed vulva pressed against my pant leg. _Tribbing_ — but not really, that is, not intentionally — as the Sapphists did on the isle of Lesbos.

And this is when I began to curse fickle Fate. Why had she not allowed the girl to give me her trusting eyes _after_ I had taken her, or, even better, _while_ I took her at this very moment as she was so intimately pressed to me? Then those eyes would not be innocence _pleading; _they would be desire _forgiving _and_ accepting. _Instead of my present predicament of never being allowed to touch her so as to protect her virtue, I would now never allow her from my intimate embrace.

But, no.

I also now had red on me.

I would have to destroy the pants. But not by fire, not in this cabin's stove. The scent of her blood as it atomized in the flames? It would paint itself on every wall in this cottage. I would never be able to breathe in here again. I would have to dispose of the pants as I would dispose of her pad: the Belle Fourche river would eventually be receiving two new articles of dirtied clothes.

I was so relieved that this so lightly populated region of the country was void of vampires: all the bloodied clothes in the river would attract undesirable attention.

I had to take care of everything, as was the case for the girl in her weakened state, but I would really need to start having her do things on her own. Dependency on a vampire? I could feel her need for me increase and her own will weaken as I took care of the chores around the cabin. This was bad: one of her defining characteristics was her strong independence, and I was stealing this away from her. I had to do this for now, but when her strength returned, I would return to her a measure of her self, even in her captivity.

And now came my mistake.

I couldn't experiment to heal her throat with venom, so I did what my father did for me, I handed her a cup of Drambuie.

In my defense, it did help ... help her throat, that is.

And it was amusing watching her antics as she staggered around the cabin and then listen to her now uninhibited thoughts streaming out in a garrulous flow of words. Quite a refreshing change from her usual weepy apologizing. _So,_ I thought to myself, _this is what she really thinks beneath that sad exterior._ 'Miss Bossy-pants'? Funny? Nice? She really, truly, saw me this way?

She really, truly, saw the world completely as it was not.

But then, instead of staying asleep, as she had just drifted off to do — nuzzling me the whole time ... _oh, my goodness! Did she find it necessary to throw herself at me like this?_ — a full three minutes and forty-seven seconds later, she awoke with a start, and she began talking about Royce, or "Roy", as she called him.

I did not like this turn of the conversation, not at all. _Let dead rapists lie,_ I always say.

But it turned out she wasn't talking about Royce, or about Edward. She was talking about herself, and she was talking about me. She was talking about _us._

Oh, she used the pretense of "hooking" me up with a big teddy bear vampire, but she was doing exactly what every girl does when she becomes aware of the attentions of a man that she thinks is planning to court her. She was trying to deflect my attention away from her to someone — _anyone_ — else. She was testing my resolve: "Oh, John, you should really go out with my best friend Mary; she'd be perfect for you!"

Every girl does this. Well, every girl except Vera and me. Her husband to be was _in trade._ If she did this, he would have no defense: he would be required to walk away. On top of that, her parents made it quite clear that they would disown her completely, cut her right off, if she married _that son of a carpenter._ She did ... and they did.

God bless Vera. I don't know why she ever considered me a friend, for she did right by her own self and she followed her heart and not the nose for money. And she got what she deserved: happiness.

As for me, I couldn't play this courting game either. _Of course,_ Royce was entirely eligible and would disappear at the slightest hint of my disinterest ... and I was not disinterested, and it would be an advantageous match. Just good business. So I didn't check his resolve; I didn't check his character, because, _obviously,_ Royce, a rich, clean-cut man, was beyond reproach.

I got what I deserved, too: _this._ This _non-life._ This _eternal want. _I didn't do diligence in this matter, so diligence was done onto me. I got what I deserved.

This girl, unlike me, was being prudent, and doing what a girl should do: push away the suitor to see if the suitor had backbone enough, had character enough, to stay unmoved from her initial test of his affection. And how does one answer that? There is no refutation. This statement is simply the girl's acknowledgment of the boy's intention. I could not say: "Oh, I'm not interested in _you that way." _Because why? Because she would then know that I had considered her test, and then she would be constantly considering what I said in her heart ("she's thought about me _that way..."_) and that would give her a cruel hope. I couldn't say: "Yes, a big teddy bear vampire is just what I need." Because then she would be constantly throwing herself into more and more danger to find such a match ("Excuse me, Mr. Vampire, sir, I have this 'friend' and I was wondering ..."), and using that as an excuse to check on me ... constantly. I couldn't remain silent, because that would indicate acceptance, not just acknowledgment.

My only option was to accept her invitation to court her.

And I most certainly couldn't do that.

_She is a mortal! I am a vampire! _It simply cannot work.

And then there's the issue of her sex and mine.

Lying with a man? I saw that every moment of every day, and I never wanted to feel that again outside of my mind, and I worked every time to rid that experience from my mind, too. The strength of me being violated was really just too powerful to overcome, and I was simply deluding myself when I cast my vain hopes toward Edward. That's probably part of the reason why he rejected me: he knew I could never overcome my inherit prejudice toward all men; my loathing for all of them for what a few did to me. But for her? She was trapped with me, but what if she escaped to the world of man again? Escaped to the human world where she _would_ be courted and _would_ be proposed to and _could_ bear children and _could_ raise a family. How would she explain _this_ to a suitor? _Yes, I slept with a 'girl' who kidnapped me, but ..._

She wouldn't be allowed to finish her sentence. He would leave the flowers on the table and excuse himself, never to see her again. _Plenty of non-queer fish in the sea, after all._

I couldn't do this to her, even if the possibly of her escape was so remote as to be an impossibility. After all, _never say never, _not in this eternity. The girl _could not possibly_ escape me, which meant that eventually she probably would, and this meant I had to factor that into everything I did.

Then, thankfully, she did fall asleep clasping me to herself, as if she were afraid I would attempt to steal away into the night, holding me tightly as she were afraid I was a dream that would disappear in the morning.

As if I could leave her. The vision I had had of her lying dead and drained in my arms showed me that impossibility. I looked at her now, tilting her head back and saw right through the closed eyelids those brown eyes that opened up right into her soul.

And then I remembered that her sleep did not allow my escape from her. Not at all. And I remembered what she had done in this world as she acted on the world in her dream.

And my arm holding her flashed down between my legs under my PJs and entered me just where she did.

_Stop it!_ I commanded, but my traitorous fingered ignored me as they began to stroke quickly inside my vagina.

So I pulled my other arm from under the girl and pushed her away slightly to pull that rebellious hand away from me, but instead of doing that, it began the tease my clitoris.

_No, stop it, now!_

But I felt myself building, and I couldn't stop it.

And as furiously as my demanding fingers were, I couldn't come. My fingers were not her inept fingers. They were not her inept and warm and soft and sweet fingers.

So I looked at the girl as I desperately masturbated, and I didn't even have to strain my imagination, the image came bidden, naturally and easily. We were embracing. She was looking at me with loving and tender and wanton eyes, and our lips were pressed together. I felt her body rise as I kissed her mouth, and I felt her soft sweet lips on my lips, and as she pressed herself against me, I felt our hips join and then move together, and as my mouth kissed hers, I felt our lips ... and then felt our lips. Kissing passionately, tenderly, needingly above, and moving together below with her warm needy wetness and my demanding wetness intermingling with the sweetest of kisses. And then she would throw her head back and moan, and come, and keep coming as I met her need with my _want_.

And that's when I felt myself beginning to let go; that's when I felt myself just beginning to go away, ... far, far away.

And that's when the sleeping girl, feeling my absence, turned toward me and wrapped her arm around me, and sighed the warm breath of her contented and relieved sigh right into my face. A kiss of sweet air from _her_.

And that's when I came.

I came, and I kept coming and coming and coming.

"Oh, Gochkt..." I didn't even have enough breath in my lungs to finish my exclamation as I came: _Oh, God!_

I came so hard that I lost my ability to see for a few seconds, even though my perfect vampire eyes remained open, but then I did see again, and it was _her,_ right in my face, limned in the light of either my lust or my bloodlust or my ...

No.

Now I felt shame — utter shame — as I slowly slid my now obedient fingers out of myself and placed them by my side, as I placed my wet and disgusting fingers away from the girl, away from the girl whom I just treated with wanton imaginings, away from the girl whom I should be trying to save in this life and in the next.

Away from the girl I didn't deserve. Away from the girl I would never deserve.

I would never deserve her, because I had just treated her first as a vessel of blood and then as an object of lust. I had just sullied her in every way imaginable.

And now I hated Edward, of all people, with a passion of hatred that I had never felt, not even for Royce and his buddies. Why couldn't he have found a compelling, irrefutable argument? No, he had to rely on the old time-worn arguments that could not stand up in the light of reason: we had souls.

And now I knew it. Now I felt it. I have a soul, because I know exactly what I am.

I'm not a damned soul in Hell, because it has the benefit of eternity, the eternal and ever-present Now, without the endless second-by-second dragging out of this temporal existence. At least, also, a damned soul has the pleasure of feeling a just punishment for an unjust life.

I am not even a demon meting out torture and agony. At least the demons have the pleasure of immateriality, and felt pleasure, pure selfish pleasure, unrestricted by this _unending want _that my material nature forces upon my being.

No, I am a vampire: _wanting, torturing, murdering, drinking, lusting, wanting ... wanting!_ I am a vampire _cursed with a soul! _I am lower than the lowest damned soul in Hell; I am lower than even _Lucifer himself_ in the ice cold ninth circle of Hell. I am _even colder than that,_ and I am here present on this Earth. And in my unending walk through this temporality, I feel the _shame_ and the _regret_ burn me — _burn me worst than the fires of Hell ever could!_ — as I looked at this girl, as I look upon innocence personified.

And I hated myself for what I am. Hated myself with a passion of hatred that made my hatred of Edward tiny and inconsequential in comparison. Why couldn't I be a human again, and touch this girl without the fear of breaking her or of crushing her into a pulp? If I acted out my fantasy with her, my first thrust would turn her pelvis into a calcium and marrow paste. But what if I did control myself, so much so that I would hold her in the lightest of embraces, and our lips would brush with less than a touch of a feather? Arousing for me? Yes. _O! so arousing!_ Arousing for her? Yes ... that is, until the venom flowing from my vagina touched the blood of her menses and spread through her like wildfire.

Everything I am is made to destroy her, my prey.

And, who had ever hear of being turned by the act of lov ... lust? She would suffer the agony of three days, but what if the scents of my pheromones and the mucus of her vagina somehow affected the venom so that it simply killed her instead of turning her? Her fate: three days of agony followed by real death. _Great job, murderer!_

And isn't a natural death infinitely preferable to the walking unlife I'm 'living'? But having accepted my caresses, wouldn't the stain of that grievous sin doom her to Hell?

These thoughts crushed me, and I realized: _I am truly a despicable monster, in every single way! _But, then, just as suddenly, I realized something else.

_I didn't love her._

I didn't love her. I _couldn't _love her. I didn't deserve her, and I didn't love her, because a lover does not think and treat the beloved so, as an object, as an end, as an instrument of pleasure.

I was just _using her_ to satisfy my own cursed desires.

_Thank God! Oh, thank God!_ Here I was, _a vampire, thanking God,_ because now I was free! _I didn't love her! See? I didn't love her!_ Lusted after her? Yes. Desired — no, _needed_ — her blood? Yes! Love her? No!

I waited for the _'... yet'_ that didn't come, and felt a smug sense of satisfaction at the silence of my rebellious thought that couldn't form a counter-argument to my absolute assurance of my new found freedom.

_I didn't love her. HA! I'M FREE! I DON'T LOVE HER!_

I could now just live, well, continue in my existence, and keep her as a companion for the rest of her very short mortal life, and be what I am: a nomad, a monster, a vampire ... _free!_

Just so long as I never touched her, just so long as I never touched myself, ever again, and there would be no problems and no complications. I would finish out this night in her arms so she could complete the sleep that is helping her to recover, and I would never draw near to this bed again, and I would never be drawn into her sweet embrace by her pleading eyes.

The day was near dawning, and that new day _would_ _finally_ be a new day — a fresh start — for me.

_I am free!_

Pleased with my revelation I looked into her eyes closed in a peaceful sleep.

Instantly, my smugness dried up at the thoughts that overcame me: _If she is only an object of pleasure to you, why must she call your name for you to come? Why is your pleasure entirely dependent on pleasuring her? Why are her big, brown, beautiful eyes so alluring? Her eyes, and only her eyes, and noone else's? If you do not love her, why do you need her company, her silly words, and her presence? Why cannot you imagine going on in your existence ... without her?_

I was suddenly very, very scared. This was the second time in new existence that I was ever scared — imagine that: a vampire, _scared!_ — and both times my fear was because of her, this silly, sad, _stup_ ... no ... _insightful_ mortal.

I felt my resolve shake, but I bore down hard and resolved, instead, that if I couldn't be sure of my freedom from her, I would act that way anyway, and not fall into her trap, and not fall in love with her, even if that not falling in love was always caveated with a _'...yet'_ and not touch her, and _never, ever_ go near this bed again, ... that is, after tonight.

_Ah!_ What a fool I was to make such a resolution! For, in a few short moments, the fear I felt now would be nothing to what I would be feeling. In a few short moments, my will of iron would bend, wilt, and melt under the heat of the flames that would burn me, leaving nothing behind of me to recover.

_Why, oh, why did I have to be right that vampires have souls?_

Oh, God, in your infinite wisdom and power, _why me? Why must I bear this burden?_

I hate you, God.

I had just cursed God, why was I now not allowed to die?

I had come so, so close to my freedom. So, so close. Why couldn't the dawn come just a few moments earlier? Why couldn't she have awakened just a bit sooner? Why did what was to come not delay so I could escape with my freedom in the noise of the day?

Why?


	17. The End: God

**Chapter summary:** Well, at least I don't love the thing. That would make killing her really hard, now, wouldn't it? If I loved her, it would just destroy me to kill her, so I simply must not allow myself to love her. No matter what.

**WARNING:** Contains _another_ NSFW scene. Contains blasphemous thoughts toward God. Contains our girl crying (big surprise), and contains rather surprisingly mushy romantic syrupy thoughts of one of the characters. Well, she's surprised by it, anyway.

* * *

I did not know, in my eternity, that I could feel the passage of time so acutely, but this night seemed to make me pay for each second as time grudging crawled ever-so-slowly forward.

But the worst of it was over. It had to be. I had become ensnared in the girl's song, then I was complete free from her, ... and then, in another way, in a much worse way, I wasn't.

That last part was rather crushing for me. I am a Hale; I am sufficient unto myself. I cannot, I must not, allow another's fate to entwine with mine. Especially a mortal's. Especially in this Eternal Now.

Edward was right to maintain his independence in that Cullen family: the way Carlisle's every decision depended on Esmé and the way that Esmé seemed to be attached to Carlisle was simply embarrassing. Mates, two 'dependant vampires,' was a term too ludicrous to contemplate: immortal and unstoppable beings so reduced to the mush that Carlisle and Esmé are just was an offense to what our existence served.

But then, to what end did our existence serve? More importantly, to what end did my existence serve? More importantly to me, that is, so why contemplate any other perspective? Mine was, after all, the most important, because listening to the perspectives of others was simply a waste of time.

Don't believe me? Talk with Carlisle. But be prepared for a long and patronizing talk.

...

If one were to talk to Carlisle, one would find that, according to him, everything served a purpose. That purpose? God's plan, of course.

Carlisle was quite the Godly man ... I meant: Godly vampire.

Another oxymoron: first there was 'dependant vampire' then there was 'Godly vampire.' With Carlisle, he was never satisfied with being 'just' a vampire. He had to be a vampire with qualifications and caveats. He was always limiting himself and everyone that he could come into contact with.

With Carlisle, he never embraced himself and his true nature. He was always embracing God, denying his true nature. And to what end?

I asked him about this once, after one of his daily prayer sessions. I say that so casually, having been exposed to it so often as to take the shock of it away, but, really! I mean, vampires praying?

"Do you expect God to answer your prayers?" I had asked him.

Carlisle obviously believed we had souls — he turned out to be correct about that, I had found that out to my horror this last night — but God didn't answer the prayers of every soul. The damned souls in Hell are beyond redemption: God doesn't answer their prayers. Or they cannot pray. Doesn't matter: the result is the same. So, okay, we have souls, but haven't we been eternally judged to walk the earth in this unliving state? To walk the Earth assigned to the dominion of Satan? Are we not, therefore, damned, too? Why, then, would Carlisle pray?

His response surprised me.

"I don't pray to get answers from God," he smiled kindly as he gave me this quiet answer.

So, he was agreeing with me?

"So, why ... ?" I was curious ... I shouldn't have been, knowing Carlisle.

"Rosalie, reread Job, it is God who asks the questions. We provide the answers. I don't pray to get answers from God. I don't pray to get God to change His Plan for me. No, I pray to live answers worthily. I pray, not to change God to my will, to change me to His, to live His Plan."

"But, Carlisle, we're _vampires._ We don't live; we don't change. We are what we are."

I really shouldn't have bothered. I really should have heard the gobbledygook he was spouting, thanked him, and spent that slice of eternity less wastefully. But no. We Hales just don't leave wrongs lying, do we?

His answer was a cryptic smile.

So much for leaving well enough alone.

We were still living in Rochester at the time when we had this exchange, so I didn't know then that Carlisle was just the titular head of the Cullen coven, but looking at his weak, ineffectual way of talking, I should have been able to have figured out that he was no leader. He didn't help at all. Not at all. He just sat there, prosing and smiling.

Men. So useless. What a waste! I wondered why God even created them.

...

Well, if Carlisle was no help, God was much less so, for He was just like Carlisle, cryptic and useless and random. If it was His Plan that I be turned to be Edward's mate then His Plan was bunk. If His Plan was something else entirely, He sure wasn't helping me understand what it was.

_Please, God, show me Your Plan. What is my purpose?_

Nothing.

Was it to kill Royce and his friends? Couldn't be that, because murder was a no-no. Was it to show vampires could abstain? Carlisle was a better example than me, for he was a _practicing_ physician.

Was it to save the lives of the humans in the mid-West and Carlisle's coven from the wrath of the Volturi by carrying off this girl before she could expose us to the world? That made sense, but it didn't.

If that was my rôle, why was there all this agony for her ... and, I must admit grudgingly, for me ... associated with it?

God was just like Carlisle. He had this plan, but He was keeping it all to himself with his idiotic cryptic smile.

But I now recall hearing something from the pulpit at service that we Hales attended every Sunday. We had our own designated pews, too. After all, we had to show forth a good example for the commoners: the Hales are Godly people who attend service. You should, too, it builds character and commendable ethics: such as 'work hard,' and 'respect your betters,' and whatever else those commoners needed in order to know their place and to stay in line.

Well, that minister had said: "the image of God we have is our own fathers." The minister went on to say that we should therefore love and respect our own fathers so we have a better relationship with God, but I took away something entirely different that Sunday, looking at Father, so strong, so imposing, so perfect, so remote.

What I took away was this: God was in Heaven, and we were down here. He didn't give a fig about us, and we had to fend for ourselves, to make our own way.

And it was true. It was so true. I found that out in that dark alley between Vera's house on cheapside and our own mansion on the West End.

God didn't give a God-damn about me. And that was fine, because as I snuffed out those animals, one by one, God still didn't give a God-damn about me, and He sure as Hell better have not given a God-damn about them.

For, if I were to be destroyed, and, before Oblivion consumed me, I were to see any of those monsters' faces in Heaven, I would ... _ah!_ ... I would rend Heaven, pillar by pillar, just as Samson did in the temple of the Philistines. I would walk right up to God, right past the Cherubim He was sitting on, right past the Seraphim praising Him, and I would rip His Face right off.

That would get His attention, all right! He would notice me then, to be sure.

But God didn't care about those monsters, and He didn't care about me. Or I thought He didn't care about me, that is, until Carlisle, the "Father" of the Cullen "family," came along.

And then I realized that God cared about me in the same perverse way that Carlisle chose to change me. God was just like Carlisle: perverse, random, "kind," but ultimately ineffectual.

Because now I did know why God created the monster that was me: my whole existence served this one purpose; this one purpose in my arms now.

I looked down at her, remembering the ... the feelings I felt while I ...

No, that's not right. These feelings were just base self-gratification. My purpose wasn't _her; _ it was to take her away. It wasn't her at all, it was for the greater good of the people of this area and for the vampires, good vampires, as much as I hated the thought of that idea, and as much as I hated them, personally. It was for them that I existed.

I was just a tool, an instrument, for the greater good.

God was using me. That's all.

Well, God is Just, isn't He? God is Fair. I had, after all, used this girl just now for my own self-gratification. God had probably foreseen that and said, "Hey, the vampire used the girl, so I can use the vampire for My Plan."

God's Plan! God's little happy Plan where the greater good is served by this cold vampire that nobody loves and the world is better off without.

I hate God.

God, I hate God for creating me simply to serve His stupid little plan. I hate God. I hate this troublesome girl that I'm holding so gently, and ...

I hate myself.

Why couldn't I have turned out differently? Why did I have to be this heartless and cruel monster that I am? Had I ever not been this cold and this beautiful thing that I've always been? Did I ever have a choice in the matter? And if I did, would I have ever chosen differently?

"Oh, Rosalie, you can be the Belle of Rochester, admired by all, the world at your feet, or you can be this nothing girl from this nothing town with this nothing will. What do you choose?"

I mean, look at her! — but don't look at her too critically, because she'll burst into tears — all I have to do is state one thing about my nature, that I forget nothing in this Eternity, and she collapses in a heap!

Me, Rosalie Hale, collapsing because somebody says they have perfect memory? The impossibility of that occurring cannot even be imagined!

My choice in the matter is obvious.

Oh, before you cast stones, I dare you to ask that question of yourself.

Which would you choose? Have it all, or be a nothing? Be honest!

... I see honesty isn't a coin that's being minted much these days. You can put down those rocks, now. Wouldn't do you much good anyway these days, given my physical manifestation.

So I would never choose to be her, but, then, why do I feel beholden to her? This thought is totally inconceivable. I don't love her at all

... yet ...

but still I feel this ... attachment to her that ...

I must free myself of this. My judgement must be clear and unimpeded; it cannot be clouded by any external bond. Look what happened to me when I allowed myself to be aligned with Royce!

But how do I free myself when I've already imagined us together, intimately? Of course, she is not aware of my feelings and what I did; I can try to pretend that this moment never occurred, and never repeat it. But, I know my resolve: I felt it melting after I made myself that promise, looking at her beautiful, heart-shaped face. And this is when she is still asleep. I know myself, if she were awake and gave me one of her pleading looks, it would be over. I cannot seem to resist her.

But I did! During her most recent dream, I did resist her! It was during her most recent dream, her dream that started all this trouble that I was able to maintain control of myself and not wake her and not ...

Well, let's not be too hasty. Dawn is nearly breaking, so I have a few moments to recall what happened during this dream of hers and cement in my mind exactly what I did to resist her, and thereby free myself of this terrible anticipatory connection to the mortal.

Let's see. She murmured something about her affection for her horse ...

...

When she had done that, she had started tossing, and then held me more tightly to her, and then she said something that seemed odd at first: "The flowers: so beautiful!"

This made me think perhaps that she was dreaming of the bouquet that Edward, the meddling and foolish boy, had left her, but it didn't appear to be that, for she buried her head into my chest and started breathing deeply. Her scent is floral, but so is mine, and when she murmured something about honeysuckle, I knew what she was dreaming about.

Me.

Of course, I was the topic of her conversation just before she dropped off, so it could follow that I would be the topic of her dreams, but I didn't know what was my strongest reaction: pleasure at being the star of this little captive's dream, ire, ... or trepidation.

I dismissed the last one immediately: what need I fear of being in this little girl's dream? The only harm she had ever caused so far was to herself, and she wasn't very good at doing even that!

I should have paid more attention to this concern, and much less to my pride, knowing now what came.

Hm. What came.

Then she drew in a sharp gasp of air, as if surprised, and reached down and attempted to pull up my night shirt.

This, of course, I could not allow. I do not know what surprised her in her dream, but I could not see in any way that taking off _my_ shirt would ease her troubled sleep. I held my shirt down, but then she hooked both of her hands under the shirt and pulled with all her might.

The shirt was coming up. The only question was if it would come up ripped or whole. I eased my resistance, and the shirt went up to my chest. But you can be sure I was very watchful of what she would do next.

It turns out her gesture _was _innocent, or appeared to be that way, for what she did next was simply to rest her temple on my stomach and then to heave a contented sigh.

Oh, yes, that's right: she had mentioned as I held her — after I had leapt to kill her, that is — that she was experiencing some kind of agony. Her temple and cheek resting on my stomach was hot — oh, so hot, so thankfully hot, that is: so thankfully above room temperature — perhaps she had a headache and the coldness that I am soothed her pain?

Such a delicate creature! It is simple astounding that a few degrees difference in their internal temperature could incapacitate or even kill. For us, we have no temperature, so that doesn't matter, and, further, rip us into pieces and each piece still functions: the hand still grasps in a crushing grip, the mouth still bites, the legs can still kick through a stone wall.

And I wondered why. Why make these creatures so frail when other higher forms, such as the angels, and their opposite, us, are immortal and indestructible?

Was this another manifestation of the perversity of God's Plan at work? Was she made weak and I made strong so that I could be her ...

No, that cannot possibly be the case. There is nothing between us, so I cannot be anything to her or for her.

Whatsoever the reason, I was strangely thankful, for the first time, of my nature ... well, of the coldness of my nature, that is. Finally there was something in me that actually helped and did not hurt in this girl's recovery process.

Healing venom — so long as it did not come into contact with blood — and a (lack of) body temperature that helps reduce fever.

But I didn't see this as anything I could submit to the Journal of the American Medical Association. And I didn't see me talking to Carlisle anytime soon about this, either, because there'd be all those embarrassing question from Edward, and Edward himself, that I'd need to dodge first.

So my coldness eased her pain, but it didn't, perversely, push her away, as it should. As it does for any other being. No, contrarian that she is, she drew closer to my coldness, my alienness.

Any separation between us would have to come from me then. For her dreams ... well, they didn't show my true nature to her, for if they did, she would awaken from the nightmare that is me, ... to me, her waking nightmare. Yes, it would be I that kept a distance, and it was her most recent dream that showed me how to do it, how to keep distant from her, even as she threw herself at me, in every possible way.

How had I done it? When she had pulled up my night shirt and rested her cheek and temple on me, I thought that temptation was hard enough to resist. Little did I know that was just the beginning of the episode.

The episode continued innocuously enough with her talking. She said: "Heaven!" So I wondered what she was dreaming. Was she dreaming of her own death? Did she see her final destination?

I hoped so. She had to die; I had to kill her. Nothing in this night changed any of this, but it did my non-beating heart some good — a world of good — to know that her eternity would be better than mine.

Why?

Why was her fate so important to me? After all, she was this nothing mortal, coming into our sphere entirely by chance. Yes, she was my responsibility now, so, in that regard, everything about her was important to me, but after I had released her from this life, that would end my responsibility, so why would I care about her final disposition?

As much as I reflected on this, I didn't have an answer to that question.

But while I was meditating on this, she said something quietly, and then she did it.

Lightning quick, her tiny hand slipped nimbly under my pajama bottoms.

Her little mortal hand was so fast, and I was so lost in my thoughts, that I didn't know what was going on enough to stop her.

And, unimpeded, her hand went right to my vagina, and my mind finally processed her murmured words.

She had whispered: "May I touch it?"

I almost killed her. I almost gasped in a breath of air from the twin shocks of what she had said and from her delicate touch. And if I had taken in the air with her scent in it? With my barely contained control? I would have lifted her up; I would have brought her neck right to my mouth and drained her of every irresistibly sweet drop of blood that I could, even before I realized it, or, even _if_ I realized it.

That was her blood to me now: even if I cared, its call was so much more powerful than merely caring and merely control.

But she did so much more than just touch me.

I felt the knuckles of her fingers gentle brush down, gently brushing between my labia, and I froze, in shock, in place, for any sudden movement on my part would instantly crush her or cause her severe internal damage. I froze in place, but that didn't stop _me_ from reacting. I felt my vagina lubricate, and I felt my wetness on her fingers.

Her fingers, when they had stroked to the bottom on my vagina, reversed direction, and her fingertips brush upwards ...

... and then, oh, so gently, sunk ever so slightly _in_.

And she sighed. She sighed in pure and serene bliss.

And I came.

For the first time in my life, I came. Not from the experienced hands of a world-wise lover, not from the power and strength and smoothness from one of our kind, but from the soft, and gentle, and sweet, and warm, and fragile, and clumsy hands of this innocent and unknowing mortal girl.

I came, frozen, locked into place, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, not even allowing the contractions, as they pushed through me, to squeeze my vaginal lips. If I did allow that? With her little fingers, inside me now? They wouldn't be fingers anymore. So I couldn't quake as the ecstasy washed over me, and I couldn't gasp or scream, or anything. All I could do is remain immobile as the waves washed over me.

And they did wash over me, and I felt ...

... cleansed.

I felt renewed, and I was awed by it.

_Oh!_ I thought, _this is how it was supposed to be. This is how it truly is._

And I now was able to see my experience with Royce and the others truly, dispassionately, for what it was. It was not sex, it was not an act of love.

With them, it was truly nothing. It truly did not matter to me.

They had touched me, but they did not touch me any more. I had thought that my revenge killings would expiate their act, but it didn't, it only made everything worse.

I now realized that hate didn't erase hate.

What they had done truly no longer touched me.

This little girl had done what I was unable to do. She had healed me. She had purified me.

And now I did want to grab her, and to bring her up to me, face to face, and to shake her roughly until she did awake, but not to drain her of her blood, but to thank her.

She had saved me from an eternity of living in this shame and agony. And I wanted to tell her this. I wanted to wake her and to kiss her and to tell her so much that I lov-...

_NO!_

_No. No. No._

I cannot love her. I simply cannot. If I were to love her, then I would _love_ her.

Saying that doesn't make sense, but I knew exactly what I meant, and God knew exactly what I meant, too. _Are you listening, God? You Bastard! You know what I mean, don't You?_

If I were to love her, then I would tie myself to her, eternally. If I were to do that, then killing her would prove to be rather difficult now, wouldn't it? Actually, it wouldn't, just a very light push from my hand on her chest, and she would be dead within seconds.

No, killing her would be as easy as it ever was. What would be difficult would be my existence afterward: I would have to find Edward, or I would have to present myself to the Volturi, or I would have to find an obliging vampire somewhere, and I would have to ask them to destroy me.

And I would have to do this before I went completely mad. Before I started crossing the world, looking for her. Before I started killing, and killing, and killing, ... unstoppably, callously, indiscriminately.

I could not love her. I could not allow myself to be tied to her. I could not allow myself to be tied to anyone. I could not allow this terrible future with this terrible and forlorn monster to happen.

I was done with her. I was done with attachments. I was grateful for what she just gave me, but that was it.

Period.

She had other plans than that, however. I may have been done with her, but she wasn't done with me. Her little hand cupped my vagina still _not_ quaking from the orgasm, and she started to pull herself down to me, her lips reaching for my lips.

This had to stop. Right now. I was barely managed to maintain control through what was caused by the lightest of her touches ... for her to do what I think she, unconsciously, was planning to do?

My frozen hands reacted quickly, grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her struggling form down on the bed beside me.

_Gently,_ I reminded myself, _gently, oh, so gently!_

She didn't know what she was doing. She couldn't know what she was doing, so I shouldn't punish her for her unconscious action, and if I wasn't gentle, I would have thrown her right through the bed.

Actually, I didn't wish to punish her. What I _wanted_ to do was to wake her. What I _wanted_ to do was to give her the experience she just gave me. I _wanted_ to give her that _release_ she gave me. I couldn't do that. I knew I couldn't do that, because she hadn't suffered as I had, so she couldn't possibly experience the redemptive release that she had just given to me. But I could return pleasure for pleasure. I could do that for her.

But I wouldn't do that, either.

Would she want me to do this? Yes. Obviously ... or so I gathered from her actions now. But were her actions reliable?

No. I had to be honest with myself: they were not reliable. She was deep into her dream. Furthermore, I had made her so inebriated that she couldn't even walk across the room. And, most importantly, she was lost in this fantasy that I was something that I obviously wasn't.

I wasn't this kind caretaker that she imagined me to be to her. I was a monster. I _am_ a monster: a monster that _will_ kill her.

If I were to wake her, and if I were to_ take _her, she would give herself to me willingly now. But when she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes in the morning, when the effects of the alcohol wore off, ...

She would regret it. And she would see me for what I truly _am_.

A monster. A monster three times worse than Royce _ever _was. For Royce had taken me, forcefully, but he had taken me whilst I had still had my free will to fight him. I lost, but I still resisted, I still fought for my dignity, my self. My soul.

This girl, if I woke her now, she wouldn't fight. She would acquiesce. Willingly. And in acquiescing, later, she would place the blame and guilt squarely on her own shoulders. Squarely where it didn't belong. Because it would be I that had taken advantage of her thrice-fold weakened will.

The blame would be entirely mine. But this was one thing her giving nature would not allow, she would not release the blame for me to take. No, she would keep it all to herself, and the blame would eat her from the inside out. Consuming her. Consuming her soul, and she would die a wretched death, going to Hell comsumed with this guilt that wasn't even properly hers. _My_ blame would send _her_ straight to the fiery pits.

So I would not wake her now, so that I could not "thank" her, inappropriately, now.

I would not "thank" her, ever. I could not.

But I could treasure this gift she had given me. I could treasure the peace and the release she had bequeathed to me, forever.

But I couldn't do that right at this moment, because she still struggled against me, fruitlessly, of course, to try to attack me again. So I had to concentrate on keeping her off me while at the same time not hurting her while doing that. To be sure, however, I would not let her close to me, and there was nothing physical that she could possibly do to effect that.

So she changed her attack, using a tactic I would have never expected. One that I was not prepared to defend against.

"Rose!" she cried piteously.

And I absolutely froze, her wrists grasped in my steel-trap hands. _Nobody called me 'Rose.'_ Only those who loved me, that is, _nobody,_ called me 'Rose.' She didn't know this. She _couldn't_ have known this.

But she had just called me 'Rose.'

She must have sensed my hesitancy, for she did it again, pressing her advantage.

"Rose," she began.

_No._

"_please_, ..." she pleaded.

_No!_ I pleaded right back, but to whom did I plead?

"... please let me in!" she finished.

_What?_ She had just said _'please let me in!'_ What did that mean?

I realized, with relief, that it didn't matter what that meant. She had been mumbling something before about a garden or a temple or a garden temple. Whatever it was, it _wasn't me._ She wasn't dreaming of _me_; she wasn't calling to _me. _It was just some dream that she was dreaming. That was all.

I relaxed from my frozen position with relief. She wasn't dreaming of ...

"Rose!" she wailed again.

_Not me,_ I reminded myself, almost desperately.

"I...I..." She was stuttering in her dream, whatever it was — _not me!_ — it must have some powerful effect on her.

"I love you," she sighed.

_No._

It was me. She _was_ dreaming of _me. _She was dreaming of me, and she said she _loved_ me.

_She loved me._ She_ really, truly_ loved me. She loved me with her entire being: asleep and awake.

_She loved me._

And I ...

_NO!_

... truly ...

_No, God, please! NO! I cannot love her! I cannot!_

I began feverishly praying to God. Just like Carlisle, that I had so scornfully mocked the idiocy of it: a vampire praying to God! What was the point?

Now I knew the point. I knew it with all my might, and I prayed with everything that I could, but I prayed the opposite prayer the Carlisle was always praying, that idiot, that fool, God's Fool, the vampire, Carlisle. My prayer was not so that I would be changed. No, my prayer was to beg God _not_ to change me. For there was one case where a vampire did change: when a vampire fell in love. So I prayed with all my might that God _not_ change me.

And God answered my prayer. Exactly the way I _didn't _want Him to.

_Why?_

The question could have only come from God. It stunned me, but what was worse — what was so much worse — was I didn't have an answer for God. _Why couldn't I love her?_ I didn't know, so I thrashed about in desperation, hoping that an answer — _any answer_ — would suffice.

_Because ... because ... _

Come on, Rosalie! Come on! Think of something, _anything, RIGHT NOW!_

_Because she is mortal, and I am a vampire; we aren't even the same __species__!_

Love, obviously, cannot transcend species. Obviously.

God's answer was chiding: _She has a soul, and you have a soul, Rosalie._

I was so proud of myself — _wasn't I! — _when I set Edward in his place about the existence of the vampire's soul. How could I know, smugly reveling in my victory over that smug boy, that my own arguments would now be used against me?

_Besides,_ God continued, _Love transcends All; Love permeates All._

Implied in His Lordly Preaching was the subtext: _I sent my Uncreated Son to save the created things._ God's "Soul," the Holy Ghost, was Love, and loved every soul in the world.

He always did have to rub that in our faces ... didn't He? The Big Jerk.

God, the Creator that transcended species, loved every species, so my flimsy excuse of her species and mine being different didn't hold any water with Him.

_But,_ I pleaded, _but ... there's no way we can have children! We cannot love if we cannot be fruitful,_ and I added accusingly: _as You commanded._

Let's see Him answer that one!

An image of Carlisle and Esmé flashed into my mind.

_Love includes procreation, but is much more than that, Rosalie._

Even God didn't love me. Even God called me 'Rosalie,' not 'Rose.'

_But __she__ loves you, _He responded instantly, the sound of her 'Rose, I love you,' still making waves through this tiny cabin.

_No,_ I demanded.

_She needs you,_ God was relentless.

_No! _ I begged.

_Do you love her?_

_NO! Please, God, no! Please, please, don't do this to me!_ I screamed. Eternity in the thrall of this little, weak, frail mortal? That was a burden I _could not_ bear. No vampire could, Hale or no.

Nothing. Silence.

God was gone.

God was gone, but the girl was still being held away from me by the barrier of my impossibly strong stony arms. Her struggling had ceased.

Had I changed?

No.

No, I hadn't changed.

_Oh, thank God! Thank you, God! Thank you!_

"Yeah ... well ..." the girl moaned in defeat. It was if she had participated as an observer in the dialogue between God and me. It was if she knew what had transpired, and she had lost all that she ever wanted, all that had ever mattered to her ... all that ever would matter to her.

But that was okay. She was safe from me, so everything was oka-...

"Nah ..." she breathed out.

No, everything _had _to be okay. She was safe from me, and I was safe from her, so everything could continue as if there was nothing between us. Because the emptiness inside my being told me that. There was _nothing_ between us, and that was just as it should be. So, everything was A-O-...

"No, Pa, I'm not okay! Okay? I'M NOT OKAY!" she wailed. Then she wept into my shoulder.

No, it would be ...

Wait. She said _'Pa'?_ _'Pa,'_ as in the familiar form of 'Father'? ... as in 'Abba'?

She was praying to God, but her prayer was that of a child to her father. And what father could resist the entreaty of his little girl? Especially if that prayer came from a girl like this one, lost, afraid, sad, alone and lonely?

That was easy to answer. God would. God had ignored my entreaties as I was raped, as I lay dying, as I was changed.

God didn't give a damn about me. God didn't give a damn about anything or anyone. God was just like my father. Remote, imperial, distant.

Or God was just like my new "father," Carlisle: capricious, cryptic, not callous, just too involved in other things to care to deign to explain His confusing Plan to us lowly pawns.

Either way, God didn't care about me, and He didn't care about this little girl in my arms. So that gave me all the reason I needed not to care about her, not to love her. Not that way. "God is Love" and all that, but so what? What did that mean for us down here on Earth? What did that mean to us vampires cursed eternally to walk this Earth, separated from Him?

Nothing.

It meant nothing; just what this girl would mean to me: nothing.

...

Ah! Of course, reflecting on her dream, now I saw I could resist her charms and allurements. She meant nothing to me. I looked down at her beautiful, heart-shaped face, and looked away quickly. _Yes, nothing, _I reassured myself.

It was a good thing, too. When she had acted out her dream, and she had touched me _there_ and I felt the waves of the orgasm washing through me, cleansing me, I had wanted to wake her. I had wanted to wake her, and kiss her in gratitude.

That would have been a mistake, now, wouldn't it have been? Because if I kissed her, that would've meant I loved her, and besides those two little non-kiss pecks on the her cheeks out in the forest by the Belle Fourche, I hadn't kisse-...

_Oh, God. No!_

Eternity is cruel. Eternity is relentless. Eternity doesn't let you forget anything. Not one thing. _Ever._

For I had kissed her. I had truly kissed her. I had been repressing that image, ignoring it, but now it was right in front of me in this eternity, and I could no longer ignore it.

After our "little chat" in the forest where I had corrected her ignorant pronouncement, calling me _kind ... for a vampire,_ I had put her to bed, and I had kissed her on her forehead, the worry lines on her brow disappearing into a calming sleep.

I had kissed her. Tenderly. Lovingly.

For I _did _love her then.

No, that's not right. That kiss was not the declaration of my love; it was the declaration of a love already abiding. For I loved her before that moment.

When she collapsed into a heap on the floor, that's when it happened, that's when I was changed. That's when I found out that I did have a heart, even though it wasn't beating anymore. I knew I had a heart, because it went out to her, that sweet little pile of a girl on the floor. _That_ was the change: a piece of me, my heart, went out to her, and there it stays, _forever. _ And I was compelled to reach out to my heart — _to her_ — and take her into my arms, and hold her to me, her fragile little heart beating against my chest. Beating for both of us now. She had my heart then.

And she has my heart now.

I love her.

I looked down at her with this realization, confirming it.

Yes, it was true. It _is_ true. I love her with all my heart.

No, that's not right: I don't have a heart anymore. I am now, _truly_, a heartless monster, for she had my heart now.

I love her with all my _soul._ I love her with all that I am.

I love her.

I cannot believe this. I love her. I didn't get to argue with God about me being a woman and she being a woman, for God had left me, mid-prayer. I could just feel Him slink off, muttering sarcastically, _'Figure it out for yourself, smart vampire.'_

I couldn't bring up any more counter arguments, but they didn't matter anymore. What matters is that I love her, no matter how impossible that should be.

And I knew what it meant, too. It meant that I wanted what was best for her. I had thought the best for her would definitely not include me. Apparently God thought otherwise.

Apparently I had a new job: "Guardian Vampire." God was talking to me, but not to answer my plea. No, God was giving me my new job. He probably came down from Heaven to collect her guardian angel, saying that another immortal now was filling the rôle.

Great. Because I knew what the job description entailed. Getting this trouble-attractor to Heaven, come Hale or High Vampire. And I did love her, and I did want her happiness, and she could only be Happy if she was in Heaven.

And one sure way that she wouldn't get to Heaven? If she were to consummate her love for me.

But she was already attempting that in her sleep. If she were awake? If she knew my love for her?

She wouldn't even have to try. All she would have to do would be to bat her lashes and blush her blush, and I would have our clothes ripped off, hers and mine, throwing her right onto this bed from wherever she was standing in this cabin, or even if she were outside, for that matter.

She wouldn't even get to finish one of her ever available 'um's that would proceed her question of, _'Um, Rosalie,' — _or Rose or whatever she wished to call me — _'what are you doing?'_ She wouldn't even get the first hummed syllable out before my lips sealed hers, before I pressed my body to hers, before my _wanting, needing,_ action made it abundantly clear _exactly_ what I was doing.

And after that consummation, what would stop the next time, ... and the next, ... and the next? Yes, what would stop her from falling further and further from Grace, now that I had forcefully presented to her exactly what I _wanted_ from her, because now that I love her? I _lusted_ for her all the more. This was not a platonic love, not even in the slightest. I _love_ her, but I also _wanted_ her. Did I ever _want _her! In fact, I wanted her right now. I could see now why Carlisle and Esmé were always going at it: they truly did love each other, in every way, and it expressed itself in their lovey-dovey talk, and it expressed itself very strongly in physical ways, too.

Just as it expressed itself in me in these ways, too. And at the first signal from her, I _would_ take her, ... and she _would_ give herself to me, in that moment of my unbridled passion. For the first time, she would give herself to me out of ... what? Her well of nearly infinite kindness? Out of her politeness? _'Oh, I didn't stop you, Rosalie,'_ — or Rose or whatever — _'because I felt it would be rude, and you looked so desperate, so I thought it would make you happy ...' _ So exactly in character for her, and all the other times that would follow? She would be giving from habit that I had created.

But in my taking her, I would defeat the perverse reason for my wretched existence. God gave me this love of her to cherish her, to protect her on this Earth so that she could get to Heaven, so she could be Happy. That's what Love is: the Happiness of the beloved. But she couldn't obtain heaven if she ... if I ...

I would just have to make sure she never sent me that signal then, wouldn't I?

But how to do that? For her dreams were already filled with acting out that love she felt for me: she would surely act out that love she felt if she knew that I lov-...

Oh, no.

Now I knew how I could keep her pure. Now I knew how I could keep her chaste. She could never know that I love her. If she didn't know I love her, she wouldn't act out on her feelings. In fact, I knew an even better way to make sure she never called to me in desire. Because if she felt the opposite ...

Because if she detested me. If she despised me. If she couldn't stand the sight of me.

If she _hated_ me, she would never give me that _come hither_ look. And she would stay pure. And she would go to Heaven.

I now knew what I needed to do. I needed to make her hate me. I needed to make her hate me more than anything in the world. I needed to make her hate me unto her dying breath. I needed to make her hate me _forever._

I needed to make her hate me. Because I love her, she has to hate me.

For her own good.

_Oh, God!_

Now I knew God was a man, for He took selfish pleasure in torturing me. _Men._ I couldn't get away from them, even from On High.

The dawn was breaking, and she was stirring. I had to be strong now. After all, I was her guardian vampire: I had to be strong, and cold, and cruel ... for her.

But I love her.

And I only had this one second before she transitioned from the _alpha_ of sleep to the _beta_ of wakefulness. This one second is what I would take as my strength for the rest of the eternity from now on that would be my living hell on Earth. I gripped her tightly to me, locking my arms into place, covering her neck with them, and I sucked in a breath of air through my teeth, hoping that the less sensitive mouth, not my sensitive nose, would lessen the impact.

It didn't. My love for her had only worsened the bloodlust, doubling that desire, yet again. I now wanted her more than _three hundred twenty_ _times_ than what I wanted from any other human, and the agony of the _need_ created an empty, burning, ache in what used to be my stomach, and my mouth pooled with venom. Well, since I love her, and, well, since she loves me, she wouldn't mind giving me some of her blood, would she?

No, she wouldn't, for she had said so herself.

But I love her.

I _wanted _her blood more than almost anything in the world, but I wanted this more than anything. In the whiteness I bent my neck until I felt my lips touch her ear, swallowed, _hard _— _o! the burn! _— and I whispered so quietly I was sure she could not hear what I said, even if she were awake, "I love you."

I didn't know her name. I didn't know anything. I only knew this: I love her.

She didn't know. She could _never_ know. But the vibration of my declaration echoed throughout the cabin. The walls knew. God knew. I knew. And that had to be enough for now. That had to be enough for eternity.

As the whiteness of my bloodlust faded as I held my breath, the breath of _her in me,_ I looked down at her.

I was confused. Shouldn't she be different? Shouldn't she have, like, angel's wings, and be limned in light or something? Why wasn't she any different? Why was she still the just the most beautiful creature in the world? Why hadn't she changed?

And then I realized what had changed. _I_ had changed. Those who said 'Love is blind' were themselves blind idiots who did not know true love. For love did not blind one. I _had_ been blind before, missing her natural, innate beauty. But when had I truly seen her? I had seen her when the blindness of my conceit was lifted from my eyes by my love for her. For then I had truly seen her as she was. Beautiful. Kind. Sweet. Great-souled. _Her._

And, with this realization, I wanted to do something.

I wanted to kiss her.

I wanted my lips to touch hers in the softest of kisses. A kiss of true love. And I looked down at her, and my lips reached toward hers, and ...

... and I stopped myself.

What if this were her first kiss? What if this were her first kiss, and it was wasted on me in her sleep? I shouldn't take that from her; I shouldn't take that from my beloved. _My beloved. _I savored those words in my mind. She should be able to give that freely to someone she loves, not stolen from her by a vampire that selfishly takes and takes and takes.

So I stopped myself. I would just have to be satisfied that I love her, and that I had told her.

Besides, she was waking now. I shoved her down, gently, to the position where she was most comfortable resting before, and steeled my nerve, and strengthened my resolve.

This was the first day of the rest of her very short life. This was my first day in my new eternity. This new eternity where I would have to make my beloved hate me with all that she was. And then, before the Volturi got to her, I would have to kill her.

For after all ...

For after all, that was the purpose of my existence.

For after all ...

I have a task to do. It is as simple as that.

_Finis._


	18. Epilogue: Reveille: Rose

**Epilogue summary: **I have this "consolation." It can only get worse from here, and then she will die, because I will kill her with my own hands, hopefully, ... and then I will be destroyed. And this is the best-case scenario.

**Warning:** I don't have to write that a story marked as "tragedy" doesn't have a happy ending, do I? Sadness follows, and the ending? Not happy, not sweet. This is the warning: this is the end, and the end is bittersweet.

* * *

I watched the light of the morning begin to filter in through the window beside the bed, and I was filled with a sense of something akin to peace.

No, I wasn't experiencing peace. But I was restful and resting in my resolution.

For now.

I was not experiencing peace, because that is something I shall not experience in this eternity, as I will always be moving toward the next kill, as I will always be fighting against my wants.

Or, and I can and have seen this so clearly, I will simply give in and always be consumed and driven by my wants, a true monster.

I had thought that would be something that was unchangeable in me, my _Haleness._ That is, that I would always fight, that I would never be crushed.

But the simple fact of the matter now is that I may still be a Hale, but I have been irrevocably altered. _I've been changed. Permanently._ I now love this girl in my arms, and my fate is now inextricably entwined with hers. When she gets hurt, either emotionally or physically, I feel it, too. When she dies ...

I've seen what will happen to me when she dies: I'll die, too. I'll die again, but this time it won't be my heart stopping, because she has it now, it will be my reason that stops, and with that gone, there will be nothing to stop the monster _in_ me from moving the monster that _is_ me from murder to murder.

In fact, I feel myself on the edge of the knife right now. I am intentionally planning to make my beloved hate me. I am intentionally planning a course of action that, if my resolve is not strong enough, will drive me to despair, and may very well drive me to madness. For I can see the results of my handiwork: I can see her face, peaceful in sleep now, contort with _hatred, hatred for me,_ as she spits out the words:

"_I hate you, Rosalie!"_

I can see her standing there, facing me, and putting everything she can into those words, spitting them out of her mouth as they lodge in her mind and in her heart. I can see her hating me with every fiber of her being.

Because I will make her feel that. Because I will make her say that.

Because I love her.

I wonder if I'm insane already. I wonder if I have already taken more than that first tentative step away from reason by setting this course of action into motion. I am trying to _save _her. I am trying to save her from me. But can anybody or anything be saved by hate? Didn't I already learn this last night that hate does nothing but breed more hate, consuming the soul? Didn't I learn anything at all this last night? Wasn't it love, not hate, that saved me? Wouldn't it be love, not hate, that saved her, too?

See? My will is already weakening; my resolve, wavering. I cannot allow this. I must be strong. I must be vigilant. If I hesitate for one second, the Volturi will have her before I can do what I must, and they will certainly cause her to commit grievous errors. They will bend her; they will break her, and then, when she is twisted and curses God, they will kill her, and she will go straight to Hell, welcoming, even, her eternal damnation.

And it will be all my fault. I must be strong now and for as long as she lives. I am marble; I am indestructible. I am Rosalie Lillian Hale.

The girl's breath hitches. _Ah! She wakes. _She stirs in my arms in confusion, then she looks up at me with those big, brown, beautiful eyes, and I feel myself melting in her gaze.

I feel myself taking in her heart-shaped face and I feel myself _wanting_, wanting to abandon this insane course of action, and I feel myself wanting to tell her that I love her.

But then she turns away from me, covering her face.

Rejecting me. Me, the monster: rejecting me.

As she should.

But that rejection flies right at me, shaking my resolve to the core.

And just when it can get no worse, I hear it. I hear it in her voice.

"Oh, my God. Oh, _Ros_alie!"

There. Right there. When she said my name, she placed just the slightest emphasis on the first syllable. She probably didn't even hear it. She probably wasn't even consciously aware of what she did. But she just did it again.

She called me 'Rose.'

She has called me 'Rose' in her sleep, and she has called me 'Rose' just now in her wakefulness. Because she loves me.

And I, the monster that I am, must now go about crushing that feeling she has for me, conscious or no, for her own good.

Now I know that I am made of marble, because now I feel the marble that is me crack, and the fissure spreads throughout me like an ever-expanding spider web, and all that is left of me is a pile of rubble and fine dust on the floor.

And she says it: "I am _so_ sorry."

Yes, my love. I am so sorry. I sigh to myself, internally, not daring to breathe in that sweet scent of hers. I pull myself away from my beloved, get dressed, harden my resolve, and face her and face this first day of the rest of her life, the first day where the only measure now will be not time, but the agony I inflict on her and on myself.

For I cannot be her Rose. She cannot know my love for her. She cannot give in to her love for me. Because I am not lovable. I am not.

For I am Rosalie Lillian Hale. Strong. Proud. Beautiful. Cruel. Cold. And, truly, there is no creature on this Earth with a fate so well-fitted as that to me.

I am a Vampire. That is my fate. That is what I am. I am Eternal, and Eternally damned, and the only thing I can do to save this girl, my charge and my love, is to keep her far, far from me.

For as long as she shall live.


End file.
